Jasmin et Cigarette Etat Libre d'Orange 2006

I have tested this so many times I might as well have purchased a bottle by now. There is a dryness from the hay or the cedar, a very slight crisp paper smell. But I think the cigarette smell is mainly olfactory hallucination. What I get is jasmine, jasmine and more jasmine. It's a lovely green, cool jasmine....not just the blossoms but the entire tree, leaves and branches and all. This feels aloof and intellectual to me. I like wearing it when I need to feel superior because there is something about it that says "I know what I'm doing. You just shut up, watch and learn."

would be the perfect song accompanying the way this smells on me. I get the hazy cigarettes and jasmine part, the Greta Garbo inspiration more than a masculine scent experience (The way this smells on my skin it could not have worked on a man), but surrounded by it is an amusement park- the tonka bean plays it up I guess, being quite prominent on me. A discrete smell of machinery (Making my mind drift to carousels :)) and those almost ridiculously over-sized lollipops with swirls of bright color. Quite sweet. Quite familiar. It's been a while since I visited, but i bet Tivoli in Copenhagen smells just like this.

My father was a man who was hard to read. He would buy me the luxurious toys and the shiniest of techs on one day, then locked me out in our backyard on a cold night because I didn’t go to bed—as a seven-year old.
As I aged, and became increasingly sympathetic towards my mother, days like the latter became the norm, with hitting and pushing and things like that, then everything ceased, and we were no more.
I couldn’t get to know why he would buy me the newest MacBook Pro for my college, when he hadn’t talked to me for years.
One thing that had been consistent throughout was a pack of cigarette he’d carry in his chest pocket. A pack of Winston Caster. He was a man of consideration and modern healthcare. He would go out for a smoke, never smoked in front of me.
That’s how I came to like the scent of cigarette smoke, because his hug smelled like one.

Fast forward in 2025.

You know that patients at a psych ward smoke…like a ton? Yeah, cause that was what I saw during my stay.
And nobody bat their eyes. We were there not because we were dying physically, but because our minds were trying to push us on the edge.
Everyone was so nice to me. They would bring me a snack and sit with me when I got low from my doc telling me how severe my condition actually had been. They would play table games with me (a mix of the game of doubt and Indian poker), laugh with me over some stupid inside jokes, and eat meals with me, mainly because I was so clumsy and oftentimes missed the “return” time at the end of the meal.
The air around them smelled like cigarettes. And I liked it a lot.
Possibly because I overrode the feeling of uncertainty and clinging to the residue of comfort with a stable, mutual care and love.

This perfume brought me down a memory lane, without even trying to.

Now, onto the scent…

The scent starts with a something reminiscent of feminine cigarettes. “Feminine” might be too biased of a word, however, what I am imagining is a very thin, somewhat floral cigarette in a pink or purple box.
Like some reviewers have said, this is not a tobacco perfume; this is an ashtray perfume. Or the clothes after a smoke. Or the hair. Or the fingers. A smoker perfume, not the tobacco perfume.
And it’s nothing glamorous, although well-crafted. It is a scent of a day-to-day life.

The sillage is soft to medium. The longevity is around 5-6 hours. The scent progression is relatively linear, retaining the feeling of damp ashtray.

For someone, like me, who has had smokers in their life, for better or worse.
I am considering buying a full bottle for a bit of a spice in my life.

Remember kids, don’t smoke!

People who tried ELd'O know that this is a peculiar house. I like the rebellious, non-conformist positioning, although some of their creations tend to be a bit 'artsy fartsy'. And some are just plain outrageous. This one, Jasmin et Cigarette, has a few of the typical ELd'O characteristics:

Quirky name - check!
Quasi-artistic background story - check!
Note pyramid that is hard to fathom - Umm, not really. Pretty much 'what you see is what you get'

And oh yeah.. Seriously polarized ratings - check!

But in the end, this perfume is not completely from another universe, I guess. And all that background noise doesn't really matter anyway. About the scent.. It's a bit of a stinker, but in a good way. From beginning to end, you get an indolic, rather musky Jasmin scent. In the background some dry woody or tobacco qualities. The scent doesn't really develop, although the intensity of the jasmin seems to be constantly changing. It lasts for a good 6-7 hours.

Due to the animalic musky character, it may be a bit challenging as a wearable perfume. Unless you're really into indolic florals, of course, which I am. Quite successful as a conversation starter, that's for sure.

Not at all bad, ELdO! *add to watchlist*

Etat Libre d'Orange JASMIN ET CIGARETTE seems entirely unisex if not masculine to me. No sweetness whatsoever--at least not to my nose--and the jasmine is dry and dusty, mixed up with the lint of a coat pocket in which a few filterless cigarettes were left until they broke open, spilling slightly old but unburnt tobacco about.

This is a very nice atmosphere scent, actually. A masculine jasmine, with enough tobacco mixed in to make it not seem too floral at all. I definitely get the intended connotation of a certain type of woman, who ELdO says could be Greta Garbo or Marlène Dietrich or Charlotte Gainsbourg. Although this does not stink like Gitanes, fortunately!