“Frivolity Will Save The World” – An Exclusive Interview With Etienne De Swardt Of Etat Libre D’Orange

During a recent interview with Etienne De Swardt, founder of Etat Libre D’Orange, I asked him if it’s difficult to expand his brand without diluting its personality. “That’s the permanent debate,” he answered. “If you are the heir of a Saudi family and you have a lot of money and you want to go into perfume, to protect the cash investment, you definitely have to go for consensuality and something without asperity. Etat Libre D’Orange was created without any, shall we say, ‘cash protective attitude’. It was a kind of anti-commercial attitude, to create a true DNA that you can nurture, and then, from that, get it macerated into something a little bit bigger and stretch a little bit. So the idea over the last five, seven years of Etat Libre D’Orange was truly to create a core brand philosophy without bowing to a group of investors. And now I think that we can accelerate.”

To read the rest of what turned out to be a wide-ranging discussion, please click on this link to Basenotes. And be sure to check back here soon for an interview with Quentin Bisch, the creator of ELDO’s latest perfume, La Fin Du Monde.

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