Incense and Bubble Gum- Etat Libre D'Orange

I have been hankering to sniff this for a while now, and it finally arrived today! Caught up in the description that instantly appealed to me, I had visions of something powdery sweet like Boudoir, intermingled with something smoky and resinous like L'air du désert Marocain.

The tagline reads...

"For all the Madonna’s of this world. The improbable alliance of two antagonistic smells, sacred incense and mischievous bubble gum. Encens et Bubble Gum (Incense and Bubble Gum) is a candy-like perfume that flirts with mystical inspiration.As provocative as a star who chews a bubble gum in a church, who plays with crucifixes and yet bows low before the altar.....Peach, raspberry, vanilla, lily of the valley, orange blossom, musk, incense…"

If only I got a hint of that promised raspberry. I would even have settled for some cheap drugstore musk.

Instead, what I got was flat, nondescript and utterly disappointing. Whatever was in there, was plasticky, like the inside of a new plastic lunchbox, with a touch of some vague, pine inspired disinfectant. No sweet bubblegum, no resinous incense. It smelled like a chewed up piece of bubblegum that has been stuck under a church pew and left to dry, harden and then turn gray. If you got down on all fours and sniffed under the pew, Incense and Bubblegum EDT would be what you would get up your nostrils.

I was really disappointed, because this had the potential to be a really decent scent, especially considering the references to Madonna. I'm a Madonna fan from way back and I really did expect some snappy, sassy sweet bubblegum and perhaps the patchouli incense like they used in the first pressings of the Like A Prayer album (go sniff your vinyl, its all true!) I was even prepared to expect a Boudoir dupe with a heavier base of incense. Theres no way that combination could go wrong and what a remarkable combination it would have been.

I am only thankful I got a sample first and didn't waste my money on a full bottle.

A+ for the Madonna references, F for farking it up royally.

Incense et Bubblegum comes in 50ml EDT