The curtain rises on a state at the corner of 69 rue des Archives, in the Marais, Paris. A place that is like a frontier, where the old world ends and the new world begins. The pale moon can be seen lowering over the towers of Notre Dame in the distance. A man and a woman are in a perfumery, surrounded by bottles. He has yielded in submission to a fallen sovereign and is condemned to the ultimate fate. She is the new soul, the new role, she is desirable and she has conquered. She is the denunciation, a touch condescending. The fluttering of her eyelashes declares she is the one whose hour of glory has arrived, a scent testing blotter in hand.

The date is November 16, 2019.

“- EXIT THE KING, a perfume to dream of entropy? Etienne, you’re rambling, you have finally lost your mind. Entropy has nothing to do with perfume.

– Yes Lola, you heard correctly. EXIT THE KING, a perfume to dream about entropy. Don’t you think entropy is nice?

– Perched on the scaffold before the guillotine, you speak these three words like a farewell to the troubled world.

– There’s nothing for you to understand, innocent child. This is about making a perfume like a Loire castle, a perfume that could rise higher than the castle of Blois, higher than the terrace where the last Valois watched the sun set in its glory. And then disappear, die, as if by magic before the fall. With the whisper of a kiss at the moment of its glory, and then a humble return to something else. A perfume of magnificence, love and goodness for the new world, and of forgetting the old and overwhelming powers. Resolutely chypre.

– Welcome to the new world, you mean?

– Yes Lola, provided it’s modern and eternally chypre like this perfume.”

EXIT THE KING.

Ingredients

Alcohol Denat., Parfum (Fragrance), Aqua (Water), Butyl Methoxydibenzoylmethane, Ethylhexyl Salicylate, Hexamethylindanopyran, Pogostemon Cablin Oil, Tetramethyl Acetyloctahydronaphthalenes, Benzyl Salicylate, Linalyl Acetate, Hydroxycitronellal, Limonene, Dimethyl Phenethyl, Linalool, Trimethylbenzenepropanol, Beta-caryophyllene, Geranyl Acetate, Rose Flower Oil/Extract, Hexyl Cinnamal, Pinene, Citrus Aurantium Peel Oil, Citronellol, Benzyl Alcohol, Geraniol, Evernia Prunastri (Oakmoss) Extract, Isoeugenyl Acetate, Rose Ketones, Citral, Jasmine Oil/Extract, Eugenol, Alpha-isomethyl Ionone, Benzyl Benzoate, Farnesol.

The ingredients in Etat Libre d’Orange products are updated regularly. Before using an Etat Libre d’Orange product, please read the list of ingredients on its packaging to ensure that the ingredients are suitable for your personal use.

MEET THE MAKER

Name: Etat Libre d'Orange Exit The King EDP 100ml
Brand: Etat Libre d'Orange
SKU: 24942
Availability: InStock

Etat Libre d’Orange

Etat Libre d’Orange is a provocative niche fragrance house founded in Paris in 2006 by Etienne de Swardt. From its inception, the brand positioned itself as a radical departure from traditional perfumery, embracing irreverence, irony, and artistic freedom as its core values. The name itself—“Free State of Orange”—signals its intent: a symbolic territory where perfume is liberated from convention, commercial restraint, and polite expectations.

The brand’s creative philosophy is built on disruption and storytelling. Rather than adhering to safe or predictable olfactory themes, Etat Libre d’Orange often explores taboo subjects, contradictions, and emotional extremes. Love, death, sexuality, religion, humour, and identity frequently appear as conceptual anchors for its fragrances. Each perfume is treated as a narrative gesture—sometimes poetic, sometimes confrontational, and often intentionally ambiguous. The goal is not merely to please, but to provoke reaction, reflection, or even discomfort.

A defining feature of the house is its collaborative approach. Instead of maintaining a single in-house perfumer identity, Etat Libre d’Orange works with a wide range of independent perfumers, giving them unusual creative freedom within the brief. This results in a highly diverse catalogue where no single ‘house style’ dominates. Some creations are smooth and wearable, others are deliberately subversive, avant-garde, or conceptually eccentric. This openness allows the brand to function almost like a curatorial platform for perfumery ideas rather than a traditional fragrance line.

The creative process often begins with a conceptual provocation rather than a scent profile. A title, story, or philosophical question might serve as the starting point, with perfumers invited to interpret it freely. This leads to fragrances that feel more like essays or short films translated into scent. Works such as Fat Electrician, You or Someone Like You, and Remarkable People illustrate the brand’s range—from playful irony to cultural commentary to unexpected elegance beneath conceptual boldness.

Despite its rebellious identity, Etat Libre d’Orange maintains a high level of technical perfumery craftsmanship. The compositions often balance strong conceptual ideas with carefully constructed accords, ensuring that even the most unconventional fragrances remain wearable in their own way. The brand also embraces contrast: beauty and discomfort, refinement and excess, familiarity and strangeness often coexist within the same composition.

Packaging and presentation further reinforce the brand’s ethos. The bottles are uniform and minimalist, placing emphasis on the juice rather than ornamental design, while the naming of fragrances is deliberately striking, poetic, or provocative. This consistency in form contrasts with the diversity of the scents themselves, creating a clear visual identity for a brand built on creative unpredictability.

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