Rien
Etat Libre d'Orange (2006)

ELDO's sense of humor is as eclectic as their perfumes. Sometimes irreverent and downright crude, other times tongue-in-cheek and intellectual. In the case of Rien, the joke mostly takes the latter form. Rien, meaning "nothing", is the exact opposite of what this fragrance is... or is it? Antoine Lie rooted through his cabinet of perfume curiosities, found all of the most common and most pungent materials he had, turned each one up to their maximum potency of Spinal Tap 11, and smashed them together. If something smells like everything, well, then it mostly smells like nothing, right? A person rambling on to make a point, providing context ad infinitum, to try to say everything, then in effect they say nothing. If a perfume could be a contrarian, it would be Rien.

The philosophical and rhetorical aside, what does it smell like? Glorious. In a way, Antoine Lie sort of "failed" in the quest to say/be "nothing" by saying/being "everything" because he has miraculously managed to make all of these disparate ingredients work together to have a common voice. Incense, rose, leather, labdanum, oakmoss, patchouli, balsams, vanilla, cumin, black pepper, and massive aldehydes - strange bedfellows indeed, but then Jekyll and Hyde both shared the same body after all. It's powdery, floral, animalic, green, leathery, earthy, spicy, and amberic. What glues it all together in my opinion are the overdoses of rose and aldehydes. The aldehydes are cranked to the maximum, the rose is dense and pungent, the soft green and woody moss their wingman, and together they have this effect of weaving throughout the perfume to cuddle and soften the cruder and dirtier earthy, leathery, spicy, and animalic notes. Give the perfume a big inhale and the powdery florals and greenness hit you like an enveloping cloud, but then, as the cloud parts, that animalic spicy earthiness hiding in the depths gives you a big mischievous grin. Jekyll & Hyde, for sure. Or It looking up at you from sewers.

I can't say I understand how this works, and, in a way, I guess you could say that's because it doesn't actually work. But I'll be damned if I cannot stop wanting one more intoxicating sniff. What Antoine Lie has accomplished with Rien is truly original, a massive success through absolute failure. That's a paradox I think Etat Libre d'Orange would certainly appreciate.

To me, the dominant smell is mature, 70s-80s, soapy white floral. Rien gives me Kouros vibes, like the smell of bathroom urinal cake. It's not bad but this will not be pleasing to most.

I get good projection and longevity. Performance is solid without being overly loud or annoying.

'Rien' is, indeed, anything but nothing; (Etat Libre D'Orange at their little games again!)
It's a pretty complicated affair as it happens and although I fell in love with it over an
hour-or-so it's not going to be a fragrance which will sit well with everyone. This has
everything and more to do with its blatantly animalic nature (imagine the lovechild of
Bulgari's marvellous 'Black' and Serge Lutens' challenging but delicious 'Muscs Koublai
Khan' and you're getting somewhere close!)
The smokey/leathery/rubbery opening accord descends slowly to a warm but provocatively
feral musky/amber dry-down (the presence of Cistus in the mix will likely have more than a
little to do with this). It's a tad weightier on a smelling strip than it is on skin, whose warmth
seems to tame what otherwise might have been a very dangerous beast indeed.

Probably best not to wear it on a first date....!

Rien by Etat Libre d'Orange (2006) is quite a fragrance, make no mistake about that. Antoine Lie has sought (or been told to seek by ELDO) a successor to the mighty Kouros by Yves Saint Laurent (1981), which in spite of its qualities even in most recently-produced form, isn't the sex-dripped raunch beast of those initial bottles (for better or worse). Rien seems to reinstate that, going full throttle on incense, leather, animalic musk, cumin funk, and labdanum, divorcing the soapy fougère of Kouros from the rest. In essence, this isn't so much a copy or continuation of that Pierre Bourdon-penned DNA, it's an evolution. If you're not on board with that, turn back now, as there is absolutely no quarter given to the non-believers in this church, evidently. Am I surprised? Not really. Etat Libre d'Orange as it stands, is heavily subversive, dripped in LGBT culture, and ironic, so a scent like Rien is almost a given. Most folks wearing this will probably not get the joke of this scent being called "of nothing" in French.

The opening is brash aldehydes of that old Chanel No. 5 (1921) quality, sour and nose-singing like your grandma's favorite purse spray. The late Divine could have worn this comfortably. The rest moves into bergamot as expected, with iris ionones and rose in the heart, flavored with pepper and cumin. The funk is noticeable right away, as the leather and animalis notes (not civet) take over immediately, although this is a drier funk than something like Kouros or even Furyo by Bogart (1988). Styrax, patchouli, frankincense, amber, and oakmoss bring up the rear, going full-chypre with labdanum and a woody nuance at the end. Animalics do tone down considerably in late phases, and Rien becomes more of a dry chypre incense experience. Performance is otherworldly, so go easy on the sprays, and this scent profile can even be a little overbearing with light application if worn in the wrong weather, especially high humidity. Do as thou wilt though, but harm none. For me, this reads masculine, although officially Rien is a shared fragrance gender-wise. For me, this is a lovely kick to the face I'd wear anytime, fight me.

All told, there is a reason that vintage heads hype this one in particular, and within a few more years time will qualify as vintage anyway, unless that time has already passed when you get around to reading this review. Discontinuation scares also abound on this and its partner Rien Intense Incense by Etat Libre d'Orange (2014), but of course they do, since the kind of cloistered and obsessive "all mine" collectors that get on their lonely soapboxes about the end of perfumery as we know it, are also the kind of types to actually yearn for discontinuation so they can abate the thought of having to share something with someone else able to buy a bottle as they have. That sad psychological minefield aside, they are typically right about Rien, as this is a hearkening back to the bigger (and often gayer) era of the early to mid 1980's, where stuff like Pete Burns and Boy George were mainstream, and not targeted by hate groups. Clearly this scent is anything but "of nothing", although I'll leave it to you for finding out. Thumbs up

Very interesting take on vintage Kouros.
This is not for the faint of heart, VERY strong fragrance.
I really like it, love it even.
But then again, I love Kouros, so...

Holy Toledo, Rien is a mega-aldehydic incense torpedo suited up in black leather. Talk about a stratospheric detonation of diffusive perfumery to the nth degree. Not to fear, however, Rien, for everything that its paradox of a name suggests otherwise, has a sparkling, exultant beauty that harkens back to the legacy of Ernest Beaux and his introduction of alipathic aldehyde overdoses in Chanel No. 5 coupled with the addition of muscled, burly, alpha-male trope heavy-hitters of the 70s and early 80s. The resinous incense in Rien is really the showstopper here, it reminds me of all those brightly-hued incense sticks one might peruse through at a head shop, with names like "Tarot," "Wild Nights," "Butt Naked," "My Queen." Somehow, Spencer's Gifts vibes aside, it is really addictive and somehow works to create this accord evoking so many memories of youth and rapturous restlessness (the memories one may actually want to revisit from adolescence and early adulthood).

Rien is the straight man, however, for Rien Intense Incense, which with just one single spray seems like an olfactory wormhole, a vortex pulling everything and everyone in. While the olibanum in Rien has a major role of equal billing to the leather, with Intense Incense, it is a brick of olibanum, incense in overdrive, still brimming with every alipathic aldehyde available for perfume use, and the addition of mutant orris root that is waxy, crayon-like, play-doh like, almost igniting deep within the recesses of the hippocampus distant memories of kindergarten. It must be dealt with a light hand, as it is surely one of the most potent, tenacious fragrances I've ever encountered. Utterly fascinating, with this bottle lasting several lifetimes, epochs, dimensions, matrices.