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Not horrible, but it's like Lipstick Rose with the amber warmth taken away and using cheaper ingredients, with a sprinkle of ginger. It's quite in line with other ELDO scents. For me, it just immediately makes me wish it was Lipstick Rose, a far superior fragrance, although PdP is way cheaper.
This has a mad opening to me. I smell a discrete rose accord which is either tacky or the most accurate and refined rose I've ever smelled, I genuinely don't know which? lol. However, that's all irrelevant because the accord is oddly very fleeting and Putain is not about roses it's a powdery, musky fragrance with a sort of artistic bite, preventing it from being a completely friendly, cute affair. I wouldn't say it's animalic or anything overt but there's an undercurrent of something heading in that direction. It possesses that creative punky spark Etat used to have, but has been lost somewhat in recent years. I get an overarching femininity to it and that was set to be the final decider for me (not that I don't own any femme perfumes, of course I do) until the deep drydown of purely endulgent, beautiful musks, close to the skin a heavenly blend of ambrette softness and pink powdery tones. I mean, sure there's loads of fragrances which have great base notes where you might not necessarily get on with the rest, and I can't go around buying perfumes to enjoy after 8 hours, not that I didn't enjoy the start of this mind you. I actually loved the muskiness SO much that I would consider getting this one.
Wanted this for so long, finally got it in time for the Summer, which it doesn't really seem people's recommended time to wear it. The thing is, I'm not totally sold on the seasonality of perfumes, all the more because I think this is the type of scent that blooms with the heat, since I've caught it smelling kinda sweaty on me (and right after a shower, so I know it wasn't really me). Obviously it's "sweaty" in a nice way. Well, not really nice, it's sort of dirty actually, it's the slutty vibe the perfume is supposed to have. But it's not a constant feature, and possibly the temperature helps it develop this way. So to the people missing this facet my suggestion is spritz it during a hot and humid day and see if anything changes. Curious as to know if it changes during the colder months and becomes a tame(r) powdery floral.
Powdery rose at the outset, I don't get the violet notes listed at all. There's a sly dig of raspberry, a fairly soft leather, and the merest hint of sweaty cumin. Initially it seems rather tame, but every so often the ingredients seem intensify in an almost aggressive manner, before receding again. In time, the leathery notes dominate, while at the same time it turns intensely powdery. Finally, there's a long drydown when a somewhat animalic amber pushes through.
Although the putain in the name almost certainly refer to a woman, this seems a pretty unisex perfume to me, so it could equally refer to a man and, indeed, a man could pull it off pretty easily (no pun intended). A pleasant, well-executed mainstream scent, it’s nowhere near as edgy as its name might connotate, and it suggests not so much carnality in a French boudoir as someone with somewhat questionable hygiene standards disguising the scent with overapplication of makeup