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Etat Libre d'Orange Frustration vs Penhaligon's Clandestine Clara
Clandestine Clara is the community's favourite of the two.
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Notes
Top
RumCinnamonCumin
Heart
VanillaVanilla AbsoluteLabdanum
Base
ChestnutBourbon VetiverGuaiacol
Accords
Vanilla
100%
Warm spicy
98%
Woody
95%
Rum
73%
Balsamic
73%
Cinnamon
72%
Performance
LongevityModerate
SillageModerate
Best Seasons
fallwinterspring
About
Frustration by Etat Libre d'Orange is a fragrance for women and men. Frustration was launched in 2022. Top notes are Rum, Cinnamon and Cumin; middle notes are Vanilla, Vanilla Absolute and Labdanum; base notes are Chestnut, Bourbon Vetiver and Guaiacol. A perfume is a mixture. A mixture like miscellanea that clash between words and materials to explain just a little, without explaining too much, the why of a perfume. Frustration. During a summer a few years ago, while walking on the Ramblas in Barcelona, I listened to a song by Rare Bird, an English band of progressive rock from the 70s. The song was called Sympathy, and the chorus was "and sympathy is what you need my friend, and sympathy is what you need my friend cause there's not enough love to go ‘round, No, there's not enough love to go ‘round...". And there, suddenly, with the richness of a whole psychoanalytical past (according to Lacan), this same past which sometimes foists my strength on others or sometimes my great weakness on myself, there emerged from the refrain a word stronger than sympathy. It planted its black flag of melancholy in the heart of my mind, and issued forth a word more correct, more vast, more true, more sincere, more useful since forged in the experience of life: FRUSTRATION. And then to sing again in my head the substituted refrain "...And frustration is what you need my friend, and frustration is what you need my friend." Frustration, the eldest daughter of renunciation and the sister of perfume, since perfume proceeds like frustration in the game of love. It gives by taking up, a fullness never satisfied, an enjoyment started but never achieved, an infinite movement of desire without completion, without apotheosis, an instillation that excites, seduces, lulls, dominates and annoys like a Bolero by Ravel. Frustration. So take a vanilla bean, a garden rose with swollen red petals, some old rum exploding with amber woods, a bourbon vetiver, bring each of these materials to your senses. Frustration. Breathe, taste the circulation of the unheard of beans, delectable fermentation but never enough, where one asks for more, all nostrils out, ... "More, more, let us take your redness deeper, and become this animal with the dull mind of the child who wants to enjoy and devour even more this chestnut wood, this cinnamon or this vetiver until bursting, and then to bathe satiated in the poetry of the smell." Frustration. This is the love game of perfume, this is the game of love according to Musset, Shakespeare or Racine. And it is so much the better because satisfaction kills whereas desire makes you live by creating movement through the ever renewed distance, so as to never consume like a homicidal ogre. Frustration. Happy are the consumers of desire, unhappy the consumers of enjoyment. Frustration, a perfume to awaken the strong child in the fragile adult or the fragile child in the too-strong adult, a perfume for a regressive journey to the dominion of vanilla, rum and vetiver. An extraordinary State of Orange that you have to reach in order to live passionately between the child and the adult with the memory of what’s missing.
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Notes
———Accords
Woody
100%
Amber
83%
Warm spicy
81%
Vanilla
78%
Rum
73%
Cinnamon
64%
Performance
LongevityModerate
SillageModerate
Best Seasons
fallwinterspring
About
Clandestine Clara by Penhaligon's is a Woody Spicy fragrance for women. Clandestine Clara was launched in 2017. The fragrance features Rum, Amber, Vanilla, Woody Notes, Cinnamon and Patchouli. Pehaligon's: "Allow me to present to you the unofficial side of Lord George’s dynasty, beginning with - as we have come to know her - Clandestine Clara. And isn’t she a complex creature… A forceful personality, spicy but equally sweet, she has travelled in exotic countries and company - and in her smoky, velvety, woody air you may detect a memory (or three) of his Lordship… (One would certainly never guess the lady also smokes…). She is rebellious, contradictory, independent, unconventional - a woman ahead of her time. But above all, as you will discover, she is a true gourmand, completely delectable (and Lord George would know)."
Notes in Common
0% sharedShared (0)
No shared notes — these are very different compositions.
Only in Frustration
RumCinnamonCuminVanillaVanilla AbsoluteLabdanumChestnutBourbon VetiverGuaiacol
Only in Clandestine Clara
Rating
3.80vs4.00
Ratings
1,997vs945
Concentration
EDPvsEDP
Launch Year
2022vs2017
Which should I buy?
Clandestine Clara is the community's favourite of the two.
- Clandestine Clara is rated higher by the community: 4.00 from 945 ratings, against 3.80 from 1,997.
- Longevity votes for both lean "moderate".
- Sillage is comparable: "moderate" is the most common vote for both.
- Both are voted best for fall and winter.
- Both houses are premium (typically $100–250), so price won't be the deciding factor.
Buy Clandestine Clara if you want the higher-rated option; pick Frustration if its note profile reads closer to what you already love wearing.