• Let's Pretend

Let's Pretend

Created By

Etat Libre d'Orange

£155.00

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Life becomes a stage. Let’s Pretend is a multi-faceted fragrance that doesn’t hide, it reveals. Like the perfect costume chosen before stepping into the spotlight the Theater of Life, it allows you to embody the character you wish to become, if only for a moment. Here, life itself turns into a stage, and every gesture becomes part of the performance.

The opening is radiant and electric. Mandarin sparkles with luminous freshness, while pink pepper adds a lively, spicy energy. A whisper of saffron intrigues and warms, as the curtain rises. At the heart, peach takes center stage: juicy, velvety, and irresistibly sensual. Osmanthus absolute deepens its fruity richness with apricot-like and subtly leathery nuances, while jasmine sambac adds a delicate floral glow. Together, they shimmering and lively yet refined heart that melts into the skin, intimate and transformative. As the final act unfolds, cedar, styrax, and benzoin bring warmth, delicacy, and conviction.

Fragrance Facts

Head Notes: Saffron, Pink Pepper, Mandarin Essence
Heart Notes: Peach, Osmanthus Flower Absolute, Jasmine Sambac Absolute
Base Notes: Woody Accord (Cedar, Akigalawood & Georgywood), Styrax, Benzoin

Perfumer: Nisrine Grillie
Conception: Paris, France
Year of Release: 2026

  • Meet the Brand
  • Meet the Maker
  • Media

Etat Libre d'Orange were founded in 2006 by Etienne de Swart. Disenchanted with modern perfumery, Etienne sought to start a perfume revolution by eschewing trends and embracing all that is unconventional and rebellious. 

The logo of Etat Libre d'Orange invokes the tricolour of the French flag, celebrating freedom and liberty! With this in mind they founded their independent perfume republic, free from convention, giving perfumers and guest noses the chance to create without financial or creative limits. 

Etat Libre d'Orange (The Orange State of Freedom); always witty and provocative, always ambitious, forever free. 

Etienne de Swardt

 

 

Etienne de Swardt, an opportunist since 1970, is a survivor of consumerism, a witness to (and participating in) the decay and atrophy Known As the business of beauty. Etat Libre d'Orange is His rehabilitation, His Attempt to cleanse himself. Burned by life, with all ict perversions and distortions, he now Makes perfume as an antidote to despair.

He has-been Told (as we all-have): find yourself, be yourself. Purpose he knows (as do we all) That this is a futile pursuit in a meaningless void. So he Creates a collection of scents That ask "who do you want to be today?" This suits His nature as a refined chameleon, living a singular existence as an oedipal mammal and naked cowboy in a state of contradiction. He is an arrogant egoist Who Recognizes His own inadequacies.

Whether he comes from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away from gold Some terrifying future dystopia, he knows That he knows nothing, he is only That lost in this century, lost in translation. He is a citizen of nowhere, so he HAS FORMED the Orange Free State, a fantasy world Where he can Demonstrate the beauty in strangeness.  

A blatant disregard for convention Enables _him_ to give in à son basest instincts, and He Has taken it upon himself to unleash His obsessions in the form of scent. He sells himself. With His manwhore attitude, He Has surrendered à son own narcissism, arrogant and this pathology is the gateway to Orange Free State.

Introduction to Etat Libre D'Orange

 

Etat Libre d'Orange X Ogilvy from Etat Libre d'Orange on Vimeo.

 

Etat Libre d'Orange at Esxence 2016

 

Credit: Esxence 2016