It’s the 4th of July — Independence Day — the day that we celebrate our many freedoms here in the U.S. Among our most basic and important freedoms are freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Freedom of speech and ideas are fundamental human rights… without them, enjoyment of other rights are not possible.

I tend to avoid public discussions of “free speech” (usually I keep scrolling, or excuse myself to the ladies’ room and never return). Because so many times, when someone invokes “free speech,” it seems like there’s something groan-worthy going on.

The concept of “free speech” is frequently misapplied due to ignorance. People actually think that “the American way” is I-can-say-whatever-I-want-without-consequences, but they are wrong. The First Amendment only restrains the government. Not other individuals, and not your private employer, private business, private club, private college, private landowner, etc. So yes, you can still be fired from your job, or dismissed from your school, or lose your book or TV contract, over saying offensive and bigoted shit. You just can’t be imprisoned, fined, or executed for it here in the U.S.

Because there’s always that one hateful person who comes along and ruins it all, let me say that this not an actual discussion about free speech. So don’t come at me with your arguments or anecdotes, because I’m not here for that. This is a discussion about negative perfume reviews, and the fact that people can say or not say anything that they damn well please.

The topic of negative perfume reviews is pertinent to me today, as I think about my liberties, because I tried a perfume, and I didn’t like it, and usually that would be the end of it. But some people think that my hesitation to then go out and bash the fragrance publicly is a major problem in “the fragcomm,” and that the overall lack of scathing and dismissive perfume reviews out there is a giant smear on the credibility and reputations of just about everyone.

Complaining is the American Way. We see injustice everywhere, and we are determined not to be victimized by it. We’re the nation that brought you Yelp. We will not tolerate bad perfume, it must be exposed and maligned so that other poor souls will never have to suffer through smelling it for themselves and making up their own minds. Happy 4th of July, everybody!

THE PROBLEM OF “NO NEGATIVE REVIEWS”

So, there are people out there now (it may be only one or two, but it’s the American way to insinuate that it’s huge swaths of the population, so…) who are making statements about reviewers who don’t do negative reviews.

A lot of this comes in the wake of frank and necessary discussions about people on Youtube and Instagram who accept (or demand) free products (in the form of full retail bottles of fragrance) in exchange for providing “reviews.”

(Reviews is in quotes here, because I’ve seen many of these people’s outputs, and they don’t qualify as reviews. They tell you a lot about the “reviewer” and very little about the fragrance, which makes them endorsements. But, I digress….)

So, when it’s said that someone who takes free bottles, and gives good “reviews” in exchange, is a paid shill and a fraudulent “reviewer,” I don’t have a lot of argument with that.

And, when it’s said that someone who claims to be a “reviewer” AND also has a “business relationship” with a perfume brand, AND the relationship is predicated on a claim that it will boost perfume sales, IT FOLLOWS that the person’s objectivity when “reviewing” said fragrances is highly questionable…. well, I think that’s so blatantly obvious that I can’t even believe sponsored fragrance reviews are still a thing.

But then there’s this new argument, that if some significant portion of your reviews don’t scream “hated it!”, then you aren’t trustworthy. The simplistic and misguided justification for this conclusion is, “Because nobody likes every scent they try.” And, if you’re fake-reviewing bottles in a queue that were sent to you for free by companies x, y, and z, with the agreement that you would fake-review them all, then it’s a legitimate argument I guess.

But there are also those of us who write (or make? using other media) reviews as a hobby. We do it because of personal interest, not business interests. We do it for the joy, to express ourselves and our appreciation for the scents. So, why would someone like me spend time and energy writing a lot of reviews about fragrances that I dislike? The simple answer is, we wouldn’t, and we don’t.

Also, because I don’t spend my time begging and wheeling and dealing to get free bottles, I’m primarily writing about things that I own. Why would I buy a bottle of perfume that I don’t like, just so that I can write something negative and disparaging about it? I wouldn’t. Nobody would.

The thing is, when you read a review from somebody who loved a scent enough to buy it with his or her own money, after careful research and deliberation… found space for it in their home… owned it for a while… lived with it and wore it and loved it on many occasions… those are the most sincere reviews.

Isn’t that what a review is ultimately about? Deciding if you should purchase a fragrance and make it a part of your life? Who better to believe than someone who has spent their own money to purchase it, and wears it not to get views and subscribers, but for their own pleasure, as part of their real life?

As if all this weren’t enough, I’ve also recently seen arguments that say:

• smelling something you don’t like and simply not reviewing it is dishonest
• giving a neutral review or one that finds a little something positive to say about a scent that you didn’t like is also dishonest

To these types of accusations, my response is that, ultimately, fragrances are made by people. Real-life human beings with feelings, and friends, and co-workers, and mothers, and fathers, partners and spouses, and even children of their own. People who care about them and feel joy and pain alongside them. Whether you like the way it smells or not, they put their time, energy, money, and resources into creating it. They labored and agonized over it until they came up with something that they were proud of.

By the time a fragrance comes to market, somebody out there likes it. Maybe it’s not your taste. Maybe it’s not a lot of people’s taste, but somebody likes it. Somebody has bought it and wears it and might even treasure it.

No one person’s taste is the be-all-end-all of perfume. We don’t need to insult and demean people by trashing the results of their creative efforts, and nobody needs to know what you hate. Sorry, not sorry. People’s dignity trumps opinions about perfume every time. So, I will describe a perfume accurately, according to the way that I smell it, and you might hear me say that something is not my style or my taste, but you will never hear me say that something is garbage or worthless or that anyone lacks talent.

I already have a full-time job, and a home and family, and a lot of other hobbies and interests that bring me joy. Even though I write what I want, and I’m not being paid to do it, writing a fragrance review is still “work,” in the sense that it’s an investment of my time and energy. It’s work that I gladly do for free, because it brings me pleasure. As soon as I’m “required” to do this free work in order to spread bad news about fragrances that I didn’t enjoy smelling, that’s when I will stop.

(A lot of these problematic views come from the sad state of perfume “reviews” in general these days. The purpose of a review is not to tell you what the reviewer likes or dislikes. The purpose of a review is not to tell you what other people like or dislike. The purpose of a review is most definitely not to “rank” something totally subjective like fragrances against one another, or to tell you if something is “worth” its price. A review is not meant to be a recommendation or a sales pitch. As soon as somebody who doesn’t know you says “you will love it,” red flags should go up. A review should describe the scent accurately and give you some vital information about it, so that you can decide if you want to try it for yourself. If people weren’t always talking about what they “like” and what “girls like,” then the lack of “hate” reviews wouldn’t seem so unusual…. )

EXPERIMENTUM CRUCIS QUICK SNIFF

Having said all that, I will briefly share my experience of trying Etat Libre d’Orange’s newest release, Experimentum Crucis.

Etat Libre d’Orange makes some excellent perfumes. It’s also an extraordinarly audacious company that has built much success on being controversial. Secretions Magnifiques is the butt of every perfume joke, and they haven’t backed away from this as a brand, they embrace it. So they can take a few jabs, in fact they seem to welcome it and even thrive on it.

Experimentum Crucis is described as “a fragrance that will change the world.” And, it’s a rose fragrance, so naturally I coudn’t wait to smell it. A new kind of rose fragrance? The whole backstory (something ELdO is brilliant at creating) is something about Newton, and absorption of light, spectrums and perception of color, essentially the equivalent of a fragrance nerdgasm.

When it was released, I couldn’t wait to smell it. I’ve read some really interesting reviews about it that sparked my interest even more. I tried unsuccessfully for weeks to buy samples, and almost resorted to a desperation blind-buy while waiting for it to be released in the U.S. Finally it arrived at retailers, and I purchased a sample immediately.

I wore Experimentum Crucis a few times from this sample, and I’m here to tell you that it smells like Deep Woods Off, the mosquito repellant made with an extra dose of DEET.

DEET interferes with neurons and receptors located on the mosquito’s antennae and mouth-parts that detect chemicals such as lactic acid and carbon dioxide. It’s a chemical that masks the smell of humans. The rest of the ingredients in Deep Woods Off are propellants and fragrance, intended to make it smell less like “bug spray” while also allowing it to function as a vapor barrier that makes your skin smell less enticing to insects. (The end result is something like “bug spray with pink pepper.”)

Wearing Experimentum Crucis brought back many good memories for me — Girl Scout camping trips, summers at Lake Cumberland, the Zika scare, all those music festivals…. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve longed for this nostalgic scent — usually in summer, when the sun is just starting to go down, if I find myself in some tall grass and there’s standing water nearby, I just get this gnawing urge to smell it.

I already have several cans of Deep Woods Off, so it would be redundant for me to buy Experimentum Crucis. Also, I feel like this scent would only work for me in the summer, in outdoor settings. But it was a pleasure to try the sample, and I look forward to trying other new released from ELdO in the future.

Perfumer’s listed notes are Lychee, Apple, Rose NeoAbsolute, Jasmin Absolute, Honey, Patchouli, and Musks. Projection was moderate and longevity was about 6 hours. For more information, see the Etat Libre d’Orange website.