Dangerous Complicity (2012)
by Etat Libre d'Orange

Words! Yummy!! I’m eating some more, as I sit here this evening, the proud owner of a full
bottle of Dangerous Complicity, after I wrote a review a few days ago, and said that I couldn’t find much in it, whether to love or hate. It grew on me so much over the next few hours. after I wrote that review, that I went over to eBay, and found terrific bargain (40 dollars!!), for a full 50ml bottle. Hooray!

So, you may ask, what made me change my mind? The end of my initial review, which I leave, unedited. below, offers an explanation—Bay Rum, a scent that I fell in love with during my quasi hippie raver chick college years, when I found Burt’s Bees Bay Rum at the funky little member-owned granola-and-Dr Bronner’s Soap grocery Co-Op, and adopted it as my personal scent, because, as a former Opium-and-Coco girl, I loved its spicy profile, it cost less than a pizza, and I didn’t have to go to the mall to get it.

Dangerous Complicity’s bay accord is one of its most noticeable features. I have been cooking a navy bean soup this evening, using the bone from our glazed holiday ham, and I am holding a fresh bag of bay leaves, which I use in all my soups. I love their sweet, spicy, aromatic, fresh-tea scent, and its combination of great outdoors and cozy indoors. I don’t run across it very often in modern perfumery, or at least not niche perfumery that isn’t aimed exclusively at men, and it brings back happy memories, not only of dancing up a storm to Freaky Chakra, Plastikman, and the late great Frankie Knuckles, when I was a young and wild aspiring DJ, but also of the scent of comforting pots of soup, and cups of spice tea (I suspect it is in the blend of Constant Comment).

Dangerous Complicity captures the qualities of its main Bay Rum accord, the scent of indoors and outdoors. in a single accord. I love perfumes that embrace indoor-outdoor accords, they do what the best perfumes are capable of, making impossible things possible, at least in the magical space of olfactory art. It is both cozy and spacious. Its beachy coconut-rum cocktail is matched up with a comforting blanket of aromatic spice, and I think that makes if appropriate for both winter and summer.

Its only weakness is the opening. ELDO’s perfumes often come out swinging, but this one takes fime to reveal its best features. I’m revising my initial evaluation, and giving it a positive review. I’ll be enjoying it on cold nights like tonight,’and wearing ir on summer days, when I will want its smooth rum-cocktail personality, to contrast with my usual citrus and florals. Thumbs up.

**Written on January 2, 2021, and revised since:**
When Etat Libre d’Orange first appeared in the perfume world, these guys were swinging for the fences. Every scent was so distinctive, that I honestly felt like I would never smell something they did and think, I have something in my collection similar to this. But, as I’ve started smelling some of their more relatively recent releases (Dangerous Complicity was launched in 2012), I am finding less and less of their old wild originality, and more scents that feel both safe and same-ish.

I think ELDO’s marketing blurb for this scent says something about both the Garden of Eden, and something about a beachy accord of life-coconut-rum cocktails and bay leaves (I suppose that makes it a twist on Bay Rum, a fragrance I was obsessed with and wore throughout my college years), plus Osmanthus, leather and patchouli. I cannot find much connection between these, but I also recognize that this house writes some of the silliest promotional materials in the perfume business. More importantly, I would not have picked any of these “notes” out, if I had not looked them up.

Instead, I got a smooth but bland floral accord with some jasmine and violet, with a nutty quality, and a lotiony-smelling musk that I have found in varying proportions across several fragrances from this house, especially Noël au Balcon and Like This. This ELDOade typically appears in their feminines, and it is weird to smell it blended with this Bay Rum accord. It doesn’t smell bad, just mildly confusing, as it distracts from the perfume’s more interesting elements. As a whole, it smells kind of like someone wearing a high-quality moisturizer with a weak, inexpensive coconut cocktail body spray and some weak, fleeting Bay Rum cologne, things that smell good, but do not constitute a fully fledged, compelling scent, especially one worthy of a house that is so patently capable of brilliant work, like Rien, Eau de Protection, Like This, Noël au Balcon, Fat Electrician, Archives 69, Putain de Palaces, I Am Trash, and You or Someone Like You, perfumes I love and either already own, or plan on purchasing either for myself or my boyfriend. Every one of these perfumes is excellent, either a great execution of an idea that no other house has done as well (You or Someone Like You is the best mint scent I have ever smelled, it is like freshly crushed mint, not toothpaste, with a gorgeous florist greenery accord, and I Am Trash has a long-lasting candied strawberry that I adore wearing in our scorching summers), or are so original (Like This and its unprecedented and brilliant pumpkin accord), that I think my high expectations from this house are justified.

I am willing to reconsider my thoughts about Dangerous Complicity, as I am smelling it for the first time on a sub-freezing winter night, when I suspect that its beachy personality might be more appropriate for warm weather. I’ll hang on to my sample, and give it another turn when the weather changes. I have much general good will toward this house, I find its prices very attractive, and I would also love to find an updated and interesting take on my old love Bay Rum, and perhaps Dangerous Complicity could turn out to be that perfume. We’ll see ...

For now, it’s a mildly disappointing two and a half stars. It’s obviously decent quality, it’s an easy wear, and I smell some things in it that I like, but not enough to push me to a thumbs up. Maybe I’ll find something more interesting in it, if I keep smelling it. Thumbs sideways, until then.