Like This

Pumpkin, Ginger, and the Long Way Home

Etat Libre d'Orange released Like This in 2010, and the house still classifies it as Floral/Spicy. That classification is worth taking seriously, because the word most people attach to this fragrance is "pumpkin," and pumpkin sets off entirely the wrong expectations. There is no pie here, no whipped cream, no cinnamon-sugar coffee-shop sweetness. The official idea behind the perfume is a small story rather than a mood: going out into the world in search of happiness, then coming back to the comfort of home.

The composition follows that shape almost literally. It opens bright and slightly restless, warms through a golden, dried-flower heart, and settles into something domestic — closer to a warm kitchen and a wool blanket than to anything you would call glamorous. That trajectory is the point, and it explains why a perfume built on vegetables and spice comes across as tender rather than as a novelty.

The House That Made It, and the Nose Behind It

Etat Libre d'Orange was founded in Paris in 2006 by Etienne de Swardt, under the slogan "Le parfum est mort, vive le parfum" — perfume is dead, long live perfume. The catalogue leans deliberately provocative, with titles designed to make a sales assistant pause before saying them out loud. Like This is the outlier. Nothing about it is confrontational; its subject is comfort, and inside a lineup built on shock it reads as the house showing a softer hand.

Mathilde Bijaoui is widely credited as the perfumer, and the craft on display is restraint. Materials that could easily tip into food — squash, ginger, syrupy immortelle — are held just abstract enough to work on skin instead of on a plate. The original release was closely associated with the actor Tilda Swinton, whose name appeared alongside the fragrance at launch; the brand's current product page presents Like This without that association.

What It Actually Smells Like

The top is yellow mandarin, ginger, and a pumpkin accord. The mandarin is the bitter-peel kind rather than the candied kind, and the ginger arrives dry and prickly, like the smell that comes off a root the moment it is grated. Pumpkin is the surprise: green, watery, faintly sweet, much closer to a squash split open on a cutting board than to anything baked. For the first stretch this smells like preparation — a kitchen mid-task, ingredients still raw.

The heart is immortelle, neroli, and rose, and immortelle is the hinge of the whole thing. Helichrysum, the plant also known as curry plant, can read as maple syrup and sun-warmed hay, or as a savoury, almost herbal-medicinal spice, and which of those you get depends heavily on your own skin. Neroli keeps the sweetness from thickening, adding a clean, slightly bitter citrus-flower edge. Rose sits low and structural, more stem than petal. Neither flower blooms in the conventional sense; they behave like flowers that have already been dried.

The base is vetiver, heliotrope, and musk. Vetiver contributes earth and a thread of smoke, heliotrope brings powder and a soft almond roundness, and musk blurs the seams between them. What is left on skin is quiet and a little ambiguous — warm, dry, faintly sweet, the smell of someone who has been indoors rather than the smell of a fragrance applied on purpose.

Points of Reference

The obvious comparison is Annick Goutal's Sables, the other immortelle landmark. Sables is heavier and more scorched — burnt sugar, dry heat, a certain swagger. Like This takes the same flower somewhere wetter and more vegetal, and keeps the volume down. If Sables is a desert, this is a garden after rain.

Serge Lutens' Jeux de Peau invites comparison from the gourmand side. Both smell like food that has not been styled for a photograph, but Jeux de Peau is toast and dairy warmth, buttery and milky. Like This has almost no dairy in its character; its edible impression is spice and squash, drier and more savoury. Straightforward ginger-biscuit gourmands, meanwhile, aim directly at sweetness, while Like This detours through earth, dried flowers, and skin before it gets anywhere near dessert.

Within its own house, the comparison is simplest of all: where much of the Etat Libre d'Orange catalogue is designed to provoke a reaction, this one is designed to be lived with.

Before You Buy

Like This is currently offered in 50ml and 100ml. It is a poor candidate for a blind buy, and immortelle is the reason. The same material that reads as maple and hay on one person can read as a savoury spice on another, so a paper strip will not settle the question. Test it on skin, and if possible try it once in cool air and once in warm.

It is a good fit if you want warmth without sugar, if you like fragrances with a recognisable idea behind them, and if you tend to wear perfume for your own benefit rather than as a signal to a room. Look elsewhere if you want a clear vanilla-and-caramel dessert, or something built to announce you from across an office.

Living With It

This is a close-wearing fragrance, suited to places where a bigger scent would be an imposition: at home, on a walk, in a library or a gallery, on a slow weekend afternoon.

Autumn and winter suit it best, particularly the stretch of late autumn when the air first turns cold. It sits naturally against wool, tweed, chunky knitwear, and earthy colours. High summer humidity is the least flattering context — the spice and squash can turn thick. Rain, on the other hand, brings out the earthier side and makes the whole thing more atmospheric. One practical caution: at a meal built on delicate flavours, the ginger can compete.

The name is drawn from a poem by the thirteenth-century poet Rumi, in which the answer to an unanswerable question is not explained but demonstrated. That is a fair description of how this perfume works. Asked what comfort smells like, it does not argue. It just shows you.