Charogne

I adore Casablanca lilies, with their mesmerizing scent that can make your head spin and give you vivid dreams. And this perfume is an ode to them. Why in the world would they call it Charogne? Apparently it means "rotting carcass" in French. This is equally disturbing as it is repulsive. Despite this, yes the scent it unique, opulent and beautiful. ELDO is knows for wacky names and sometimes wacky scents. but I found this lacking any "bon gout" or good taste and I think they pushed it too far here. Surely most people don't understand French and they won't google a name . Still back to the scent. It beautiful and long lasting. Obvious quality and no, I am not a big fan of ELDO , but this us really good. It's starts with a bizzare Chypre- vintage allure, which quickly gives way to the white lillies, soft and narcotic, creamy and opulent in the same time. A certain waxy feeling, almost honeyed comes along. The leather is super soft, like a fine glove. There are some spices but very subdued. The middle part contains a strange creature, something animalic, woody, bizzare but attractive. Finally the drydown brings vanilla in the base, sweet and pure but not gourmand. The perfume reminds me of the long time defunct Lily And Spice from Penthaligon, which I also adored and was discontinued. It is less spicy than that but equally beautiful. Absolutely bottle worthy in my opinion , if you enjoy Lillies . I sampled from a miniature and I already got a large bottle. It is not a crowd pleaser but I don't care. Weird as it is it makes me think of the world in Avatar. PS> For comparison I do own a few other ELDO... Complicity is an interesting adelhic leathery scent, Tidla Like this is an immortelle but my skin doesn't like immortelle in general, Bijou Romantique is a gorgeous spicy and original vanilla.

Luca Turin may dismiss it, but I love it and would consider it one of THE best of the entire ELdO range. A very unusual and completely new vanilla/ tobacco/ floral. Super sophisticated, charming, glowing-warmth, radiant spicy shine and totally addictive. Normally I dislike lilies in a room for the scent tends to choke my throat, but here it is a beautiful opening sensation (I wish the floral sunburst would last a little longer. It's like a shooting star, that short but so very very bright). 2 years ago I bought KIEHL's "Ugandan Vanilla & Cedarwood" and this one has a similar pharmaceutical dryness about the vanilla note that makes it more intriguing and less sweet. My mother took me to "Reformhaus" when I was a child; a German pharmacy that would sell stuff you can now buy at Holland & Barret and other independent health stores. These places would smell exactly like this: sweet, aromatic and slightly but pleasantly pharmaceutical. So extremely well blended that after the initial lily burst, the remaining ingredients seem to blend into something that is so hard to describe as you can no longer make out the individual ingredients but the choir of their notes altogether create something so compellingly and aromatically new and unusual. 9/10. Great creation, superbly blended. Almost masterpiece. If only that floral lilly burst in the beginning lasted a little longer.

This is one of my favorite perfumes. You may name it love at first scent. I was trying to find smth new and get acquainted with Etat Libre d`Orange colognes. So I've tested all of their perfumes and left home without buying anything, but I was holding a paper stripe with the smell of Charogne. The farther I was from the perfume shop, the more I was in love with the perfume. Finally after two days of depression I bought it. :) It can hardly be described but it is the smell of the sexiest beast. Strong, intensive and enveloping scent. Vicious and creamy. Quite a seducing beast. ;) The interesting thing is that Charogne somehow smells like a slate pencil. :) I usually wear this perfume when the summer is gone and the weather is already chilly, so Charogne makes me feel cosy and relieved, as it lastes from the beginning of my day till it's already time to sleep.

The marketing on this stuff is just stupid. Folks have made fair points on that. Let's just agree to agree and I for one will simply ignore that bull$h1t. That aside... I stumbled across this stuff in a shop in Dublin this weekend and was blown away. I _love_ lily. Until now I've never found a lily-centric scent that worked for me. They're either too timid about it or they're grossly overpowering (like real lilies tend to be, IME). I've got samples of a ton of ELd'O scents and none of them have compelled me to purchase. But this stuff is so filthy, dirty, rough PLUS lily I really was bowled over. Can't really comment on sillage yet, but longevity is tremendous. 10 hours since I put it on this morning I can still smell the drydown on my wrists. Net-net, don't judge this stuff by some marketer's idiotic copy, give it a good sniff.

Charogne is a lily bomb. Dewy, slightly powdery, very fresh and unapologetically white-floral. I also smell a lot of resinous incense, veering towards amber, but with a distinctly smokey edge. Strangely, there is also a distinct marshmallow-i-ness, though sometimes the combination of vanilla and ambrette can read that way to me. The ylang in here is pretending to be banana. A weird pairing for the lily-incense, but I like it! There is a soft, skin-musk in there too. Charogne ends up super creamy and even a bit edible, with none of the usual starched elegance of lily, but instead a unique playful edge. Very plush and pleasant, but also a bit muddled. Of course, ELDO likes it's weirdness, though this does not smell like carrion, as named. No rot, no dirt. I do appreciate the scent by itself, though!

Oh... i just need to have this one! Please if anybody has it and would like to swap it or maybe even sell it, just let me know :) It's so interesting and sexy, sensual leather and incense scent... So lovely! and all of that with a fresh yet warm hint of lily and peppar??!! Unbelievable! Pure loveeee!

Warm, creamy, lightly sweet and just a hint of lily. Stunning take on classic vanilla-y amber. The lily and jasmine give a lightness within the sexy haze of sweetness. Well crafted, morphs beautifully and lasts for about 7 hours.

The animalic note is so strong, so warmful...it's a pleasure to wear it

It has a challenging, waxy and indolic start. Is it gardenia, is it tuberose I was wondering, then I opened the page. Lily, of course! Exactly how heavy with pollen white and pink and white lilies are smelling. The scent is interestingly enhanced on the edges by the surrounding notes. I feel styrax, ylang, labdanum, ginger, vanilla. It seems fit for autumn but I am not sure the flowers bloom properly on me, the sillage feels intimate, but it warms up and starts to project on me. For a lily scent this one has unique character. Thanks to the indoles, the scent is alive, true, pollen-heavy, waxy and everything lily is. I am so used to the castrated lilies of e.g. Baiser Vole by Cartier, that are also great but not indolic, that I have forgotten how intense a lily bloom is. Vanilla is great at softening the edges here. It is beautiful. It is good the name is in French. I imagined something like Roasted Chestnut...The color has autumn connotation. Then I translated the word. No. It smells nothing of the kind. I love lilies and many times bought a bouquet. I know the exact smell and its intensity, especially sniffed up close. I feel this is elegant and austere, for a contemplative nature and for lily lovers. Quite unique and less challenging than Tubereuse Criminelle but just as raw and natural. It dries down to aromatic vanilla.

More mind-bending experimental weirdness from ELDO - not because it is weird in itself (it's not), but because it's so unapologetically synthetic and clashy. And for me personally - because it smells *exactly* like vintage, vanilla-scented aerosol wood-furniture polish, fizzed up with some extra aldehydes. Like your glamorous grandma doing some house cleaning in 1963 - it smells sort of "space age" but in a dated way, throwing back to earlier versions of feminine mystique. While it has no orangeiness at all, its chemical-waxiness conjured up a tinge of PG Bois de Copaiba, at least for me. So obviously I'm not picking up what everyone else is getting at all, but it's close enough to make me sure I'm not hallucinating. It's not even unpleasant: this has an oddly compelling aroma, enough to make me keep sniffing to figure out what's going on - how can it be so deeply plasticky and industrial and yet somehow organically dirty at the same time? This will be personal, but when wearing this I just can't stop thinking of those plastic covers some people put over their sofas, and feeling like I should go home and dust. True unisex - being as oddball as this transcends gender. Freaky deaky stuff.

EN. Despite an extensive collection of niche fragrances, I knew nothing of "Etat Libre d'Orange", then, I wrote a post on Fasebook, creating a mental connection between Charles Baudelaire and perfumes, so one of my virtual friends told me: "the perfume that best describes the poetry of Charles Baudelaire (his "Les Fleurs du mal") is "Charogne" by ELd'O, so today I've found my best 2 creations by ELd'O: "Charogne" and "Rein" and I'm already have them in my 150 niche perfumes collection. IT. Nonostante una vasta collezione dei profumi di nicchia, io non sapevo nulla di "Etat Libre d'Orange", poi, ho scritto un post su Fasebook, creando una connessione mentale tra Charles Baudelaire e profumi, così uno dei miei amici virtuali mi ha risposto: "il profumo che descrive meglio la poesia di Charles Baudelaire "Les Fleurs du mal" - è "Charogne" di ELd'O, così oggi ho trovato i miei 2 migliori di ELd'O: "Charogne" e "Rein" e sono già nella mia vasta collezione dei profumi.

Indoles are the key to Charogne (corpse) by Etat Libre d`Orange. Indoles are aromatic heterocyclic organic compounds found in flowers, feces, and rotting flesh. To me, Charogne smells of star jasmine and lilies. Lilies are flowers traditionally found at funeral services. This theme is definitely not original and has been explored in other fragrances, for example, Passage d'Enfer by L`Artisan Parfumeur and Eternity by Calvin Klein. ELdO is simultaneously ripping off the concept and making fun of it. Clap. Clap. Clap. To its credit, Charogne is a high quality composition, but it’s incredibly intense and even unsettling. Worth a try if you are into white florals 4/5

Underrated - Turin is dismissive, and I think this is a rare mistake on his part. Charogne opens with jasmine, incense, and dark vanilla, moving through leather (dark purple leather), and settling to a wistfully mournful lily accord. This accord is beautifully judged - 'lifelike' would be out of place here, but it does capture the spirit of lilies perfectly, and is softly sweet and rounded - one wants to say *hushed* (the casket stands in the curtained gloom, floral tributes bow their heads). d_l_esmond is right that this is gothic, but it's more Gorey than Poe. (Oddly, there's something in this accord that reminds me of warm nights in Athens.)

I’m torn. This is a strange one. At first, the lily, soft spices, ginger, combined with the sweetness and vanilla, creates a distinct coca-cola vibe. After a while, the leather and animalics turn up the funk at the middle stage of the scent. Lily still very present. In it’s third and final stage, it becomes a close to the skin, very warm vanilla with some underlying strangeness still lingering. It’s never a loud scent, it doesn’t project far. But it’s still present. Unisex, feminine leaning due to the florals and heavy sweetness. I will continue to use and evaluate how I feel about it, but at this stage I’m mildly pleasantly surprised. 🌺

First the lily bloomed on me, artificialish and natural sometimes. Then I got meat that was rotting nicely. Oh, I loved it! Then the meat ran away. I wish the lily did and the rotting stayed, but no. Then came other flowers and a fistful of caramel. Then the greens grew, cheerful, light-green in colour, and went on to play nicely with the flowers and the caramel. The scent lived on me this way for three days and nights, like things from the fairy-tales do. Sometimes it took Charogne four days to leave me. I was not able to wash it away or to scrub it off even though I tried. I liked the scent.

Un profumo da strega matura e irresistibile. Denso,profondo e cupo ma avvolgente,marrone e morbido. Ha un tocco di canfora,gigli opulenti e immersi in qualcosa di dolce e macerato. Molto sensuale,ipnotico,il suo nome è solo puramente poetico,di sicuro non sa di carne marcia. E' solo un'allusione alla maturità sessuale. La componente di vaniglia aromatica e scura lo rende un profumo che cattura. La nota di apertura è molto forte,tipo benzina,stordice,un po come la Tubereuse criminelle di lutens. Ma poi anche qui,si scalda e si addolcisce lasciando spazio a odori caldi e umidi.

EL'dO are masters of creating perfumes that seem outdated and modern at the same time. The lily infused with animalic touches and caramel sweetness is reminiscent of several vintage fragrances (hello Guerlain) but the pepper, spices and ylang ylang make it seem fresh and modern. I love almost everything about it, all except for those few moments at the drydown where you are presented with faint whiffs of barnyard funk (I'm guessing civet or castoreum). If you're into vintage style perfumes with a bit of an edge then this might be for you, I'm personally unsure.

Despite the racy name, I smell nothing corpse-like here. This is lily, leather and spice mixed with dense vanilla. Good, creamy vanilla. Not screeching plastic vanilla. I detect the ylang underneath giving a sort of banana bubblegum impression. What makes this not only do-able but loveable for me is the labdanum and leather creating a smoky backdrop for all the sweet and creamy elements. EDIT* After wearing a few times this is just.. too much. Too sweet, too thick. The lily dies away in about 30 minutes and never seems to come back.

Skanky rootbeer leather. Dirty, animalic leather surrounded by a cloud of vanilla and white flowers and... bubblegum??? LOL! I'm not finding this as challenging as many other wearers seem to be... maybe because I've been wearing a lot of skanky old school retro fragrances? And this definitely smells retro to me. May not be office friendly but I don't find it really over the top (then again, I just wore Bat yesterday and singed everyone's nostrils by over-applying.... although I really loved it!) A modern take on retro classics.

So...somebody on Luckyscent compared this to an open-casket funeral where the uncle with the bad breath next to you is chewing a Juicy Fruit gum. And that is really the best description of Charogne. The lilies here are so indolic they seem to be masking a horrendous odor. I admire the perfumer and I ́m so glad I got to smell this. I can ́t imagine wearing it, but smell it by all means if you can – this is a scent that will broaden your horizons.