The French Fragrance That Made Us Believe Again
We’ve tested a lot of fragrances, sometimes from big fashion houses, and lots of them have been meh. Meh as in ‘completely indistinguishable from one another’. So when we came across Etat Libre d’Orange’s Exit the King, our belief that a good cologne could exist was restored. Founded by Etienne de Swardt in 2006, the house has 38 fragrances with a rather bombastic backstory which can easily be forgiven for the originality of the perfumes. Exit the King’s top notes include soap foam, musk, timur, and pink pepper, with middle notes of jasmine, rose, and lily-of-the-valley, rounded out with base notes of moss, patchouli, and sandalwood. If you have no idea where this scent is going, trust us, Etat Libre d’Orange knows what it’s doing. This is a scent probably best described as smelling like geranium, which, for a floral, is oddly unisex (though we’re prone to shun labels of ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ around this blog). If you’re one to pair white denim with a gingham button down in the spring, this is how we think that would smell.
Etat Libre d’Orange’s Exit the King, $159
Price point: High
