Divin'enfant (2006)
by Etat Libre d'Orange

marshmallow & tabacco. Very original and twisted as well :)

16th September, 2011.

Baby powder. That is all I get from this - for 8 hours plus. Very sweet opening with the orange blossom and florals, but really just smells like baby powder forever on me.

19th August, 2011.

In my opinion this is one of the most disappointing releases by the guys at ELDO. I can't say that this composition is completely unsuccessful but it's definitely way too sweet. Divin'Enfant opens with an interesting accord of coffee and orange blossoms that while it's pretty strident it still has some charme. It could do great on the A*Men / Angel / Lolita Lempicka axis if just it didn't suddendly evolve into a generic woody ambery drydown of very little interest. If you like overwhelming sweetness in your fragrance you could enjoy this, but let me tell you that you can have plenty of better options at half the price

5th July, 2011. (Last Edited: 5th August, 2011.)

Marshmallow & diapers. Meh.

13rd December, 2010.

I expected more from this one. I imagined that i`d start innocent, delicate, and end in a dark, smoky, leathery base, but instead what i got is a big floral oriental on me.
It`s not so distant from a mainstream fragrance of Jean Paul Gaultier. Divin Enfant has a great resemblance with Jean Paul Gaultier, due to the fact that both fragrances relies on woody honeyed amber and orange flower. The difference is that Divin Enfant adds more complexity to the game and increase the sweatness by putting a marshmalow note at the top that gives you a sugary aroma to the flower and amber accord. When it starts to develop, the scent goes in a soft suede and creamy mocha direction, nothing so dark or daring.
It`s not bad, but it`s not great either. A strange creature, that doesn`t seem childish or divine.

25th October, 2010.

If fragrance can be said to have a "shape," then Divin' Enfant can readily be called a shape-shifter. One certainly can't accuse it of being linear. One problem, though: after testing it a half dozen times, one still can't be sure what "shape" it will be when it emerges from the bottle.

This was not a purchase I had intended. Rather, an eBay seller had listed several largish Perfumed Court niche decants as a lot, and as I badly wanted one of them, I bid for (and won) the whole group. There is some quality in the whole self-mythology surrounding Etat Libre d'Orange that I find off-putting (if nonetheless fascinating), and I can make the same observation about the few other ELdO scents I've sampled. Every time I wear one of them, I simultaneous like and dislike it, and all the while find it difficult to define exactly what I'm smelling. Such is the perversity of Antoine Lie, creator of the notorious Sécrétions Magnifiques, and I'm not surprised to see that he's the nose behind Divin' Enfant.

I completely understand the conflicting and self-conflicting remarks by the previous reviewers. Divin' Enfant can feel like a heavy oriental fragrance, can come on with the sweetness of the orange blossom or rose, get musky and murky, shift into a glowing amber scent, then turn into a bitter, skanky leather fragrance. I can't really say that this kaleidoscope of notes actually works together; rather, the different elements all seem to fight each other for control.

It is difficult, too, to make any concrete observations about its sillage and longevity. On the average, it lasts about four hours, during which time its sillage fluctuates considerably. It seems to go away entirely, then comes back to slap you in the face when you least expect it.

There is nothing divine or infant-like about Divin' Enfant. As I've said, there are aspects of the fragrance that I find very compelling (i.e., the orange blossom and the amber), but there are so many--including its thick oiliness on the skin--that I find sufficiently unlikeable to eliminate DE from any further consideration.

Given the volatility of the fragrance, though, I can actually imagine it working quite nicely for others.

22nd August, 2010.