The Smell of Online Shopping: Rien by Etat Libre d'Orange

Theres a smell that’s specific to the “luxury” category of online shopping. And I don’t mean vintage items that come from 1stDibs or Mercari: no matter how much you pay for those, they always arrive smelling like tobacco-stained curtains. This scent is something else, and it’s specific to shrink-wrapped garments from Ssense, or Farfetch, or Net-à-Porter that say made in Italy, but are plunked directly from the shelves of a warehouse in Jersey City.

I don’t know if you’ve ever purchased anything expensive off the internet, but how they do it is they take your vegan leather belt and put it in a polyester dust cover, nestle that gently into a box lined with tissue, then they put that in a whole other ass box, before shoving everything into a massive cardboard container covered in branded packing tape. This dopamine-enhancing form factor recalls the joy and whimsy and Russian nesting dolls, and led to an entire subgenre on Youtube whereby people open shit they ordered and paid for. That specific “unboxing” smell as you tear through boxes lined in man-made, high-strength turboplastic to reach your final-sale Eckhaus Latta is the scent of Rien by Etat Libre D’Orange.

The opening is a blast of clean old lady breath. You know those Get Ready With Me videos where influencers apply 30 different kinds of Drunk Elephant serums? Rien smells like a grandma GRWM; think Listerine original (not the mint one), aerosol, and a weekly pill case mixed with a metric ton of aldehydes from the mini heart-shaped hand soaps “for company.”

This isn’t a linear niche indie frag that smells like kumquat or green tea or violet leaves— you wish! This is a bone dry chypre that hits you with a wall of aldehydes followed by an overdose of oakmoss, wood and incense. Leather is listed in the notes, and it’s there, but I get more Zara PVC trench coat than the real thing. Rien is sparkly in the style of Chanel no. 5, but while no. 5 has a transparent, luminescent quality, this is pitch black— more glittering tar or freshly-poured asphalt than a sudsy bubble bath. It’s a perfume that takes itself extremely seriously and expects you to do the same. It’s not a scent for wusses and spraying it on makes me feel as powerful as the CEO of a fast fashion cooperation with zero social responsibility.

This is a perfume that rewards you in the drydown with gentle pops of peppery patchouli, sticky labdanum, prickly rose stem and velvety petals. Rien in French means nothing, so ironically wearing this nuclear kitchen sink chypre turns you into a walking Abbott and Costello routine—

Q: “What are you wearing?”
A: “Nothing.”
Q: “No, but what are you wearing?”
A: “Nothing!”

I get the joke but this is a scent with gravitas and I’m certainly not laughing. In fact, even with its nuclear sillage and challenging profile, Rien actually does smell like nothing. It smells wide open, like the space between a box inside a box inside a box. It smells like a hit of nitrous oxide, or the air that sprays out of the can when your dry shampoo runs out. It smells like greenwashing. This perfume smells like you mixed every paint in your palette and ended up with a deeply pigmented, light-absorbing Vantablack. Rien’s powderiness extinguishes its smokiness, its serious cancels out its humor, and its darkness neutralizes its luminescence. What’s the scent of a perfume designed to negate itself? Nothing.