Etiquette Bleue
Eau de Cologne, D'Orsay (1908)

Etiquette Bleue opens with a delicious preserved lemon quality, sweet, salty, and umami, perhaps due to it being anchored by myrrh and opoponax. It is accompanied by a candied orange peel and an evergreen-woody, pungent rosemary. Imagine if L'Heure Bleue experienced a bright, sunny, cool autumn day following its previous brooding night. It's a fresh frizzante citrus without any acidity or sharp tang, underpinned with sandalwood and amber.

A mellow and hopeful candy shell with a pensive interior, Etiquette Bleue is a mood that may elude even the most open-minded of fragrance enthusiasts. Some may find it isn't robust enough, or that it's just far too old-fashioned, or maybe even that it isn't grounded anywhere that's accessible. I find its airy, glancing-away nature to be quite fulfilling, like a comfortable armchair or a reliable blanket to sooth weariness.

It's unfortunate that these D'Orsay re-launches from some time back were not given nearly enough fanfare as they deserved.

Etiquette Bleue means Blue Label, which reminds me of the grades of tea they sell by colour; Gold label is the best, and then there's Red label, and if you're hard up - or just don't care - you go for the tasteless Brown label.
Blue label is a sweet powdery cologne of the old school.
It's the equivalent of Red, pleasant but nothing remarkable.

Parfums D'Orsay was like an early precursor to brands like Parfums de Marly in a way, using a marketing ploy based on prestige from ties to history they really didn't have, but most people didn't have the means nor care to disprove. Their launch fragrance, and one of the perennial favorites from the house, comes in the form of Etiquette Bleue (1908), and was claimed to be a composition made by Alfred Guillaume Gabriel Grimod d'Orsay, the Comte d'Orsay after whom the house is based. Supposedly composed by the count as a gift for his lady friends under the name "Eau de Bouquet" until his death in 1852, Etiquette Bleue shows some evidence of novice perfumery as it is mostly based on a typical neroli eau de cologne from the period but beefed up with additional heart and base notes. Ironically, this would eventually become all the rage a century later when everyone from Thierry Mugler to Bond No. 9 would try their hand at a long-lasting, stronger cologne-based luxury fragrance; In a way, Etiquette Bleue can be seen as a long-ago forerunner to all that.

Etiquette Bleue doesn't exactly smell like an eau de cologne thanks to the amount of embellishment on the central orange blossom accord anchoring the composition, but the heredity is there nonetheless. The opening is bergamot, orange, lemon, petitgrain, and rosemary, pretty standard in the realm of eau de colognes like 4711 Echt Kölnisch Wasser by Muelhens (1792), but soon Etiquette Bleue grows sweeter and drifts closer to something like the later Guerlain L'Heure Bleue (1912). Orange blossom on a bed of rosewood and heliotrope is the core, and it is sweetened by musky peru balsam and oakmoss with a warm sandalwood base that gives Etiquette Bleue a slightly powdery feel. I think this is pretty "petit femme" in tone, but is unisex enough to be a relaxing scent for anyone. As an odd "eau de toilette double extrait" this wears more like an eau de parfum, and will last easily 12 hours on skin with close sillage but moderate projection for the first 4 hours, although seems better suited to spring or early fall than any other time of year.

Fans of antique Guerlains may see some value in Parfums D'Orsay Etiquette Bleue, as it shares common threads with them and early efforts by Coty as well; powdery oakmoss sandalwood and dusty florals perfectly balanced against sweet citrus and warm musks. This was made before the fougère and chypre were really set-in-stone genres, so it's a bit hard to classify, but Etiquette Bleue is nothing if not traditional. Unfortunately discontinued as house D'Orsay is dead again, Etiquette Bleue is not essential for collection unless you're a fan of the brand, but also isn't particularly vaunted by vintage nuts so it shouldn't be excruciatingly expensive to buy. Overall, Etiquette Bleue is prim, proper, and a rather calming perfume two clicks above a traditional eau in style and composition, with what you might call mass appeal for the early 20th century. Whether or not it was made by the Comte d'Orsay is irrelevant, as it does succeed in capturing the dandy-like "second empire" French romanticism from which it perhaps falsely claims to hail. Thumbs up.

Etiquette Bleue - d'Orsay
Can't help the associations with toothpaste, bubblegum and lipstick in this one. Its opening has a kind of 'weight' to it, a nice fresh lemony-citrus radiation with a dry herbal note of rosemary, a greenish flare of petit-grain and a nice touch of orangeblossom floralness. After this it gets an almost musty and waxy feel with a dry-bitter note and some softness of perubalsam,
tonkabean and cheap sandelwood(?) which gives it an unluxury feel. Its still toothpaste, bubblegum and lipstick for me...

This is a very simple composition. Bright, yet sweet hesperidics on top, supported by light white flowers and precious woods, plus a touch of moss in the drydown to provide an earthy countermelody. In its sheer transparency and clean structure Etiquette Bleu looks forward nearly a century to modern niche perfumery trends. I imagine that in its day the combination of moss and typical eau de Cologne elements was revolutionary, but it doesn't excite me in a contemporary context.

Limited in sillage and projection and with a lifespan of about two hours, Etiquette Bleu makes a nice hot weather office scent, though I suspect it's most important now for its role in fragrance history.

The notes seem like they would form a classical composition: neroli, petitgrain, orange, lemon, musk...yet the balsam and probably moss add a chypre character that detracts from the beauty of the citrus and orange blossom. The citric accord is somewhat synthetic as well. The base is very powdery. Is this a traditional cologne? well, sort of.

UPDATE VINTAGE EDC

I recently tried the vintage EDC of this product and have updated my rating to thumbs up. It has the same feel as the current EDT, but lacks the harsh synthetics. Orange, neroli, musk, with a dash of incense resins in the base for depth. Classical and would be at home in the 1910s and 1920s.