ELDO Above the Waves: a marine with a backbone, not a body spray

I have a complicated relationship with marine perfume. Give me steel piers, sun-bleached ropes, incense haze skimming salt water. Spare me the locker-room blue stuff. So when Etat Libre d’Orange announced Above the Waves, first as a Taiwan exclusive and now going global in October, my ears perked up.

Above the Waves honors Mazu, the sea goddess revered along the Taiwanese coast. That reference matters. It hints at tide-slick stone and ritual smoke, not neon calone and dryer sheets. ELDO has always done salt and strangeness with a wink. Secretions Magnifiques proved they understand the metallic edge of skin and sea. Fils de Dieu showed they can fold Asian references into something luminous and wearable. You Or Someone Like You nailed air and clarity without turning sterile. If they thread those talents together, this could be the briny, mineral, incense-brushed marine many of us have begged for.

I have not worn it yet, so here’s what I hope to find on skin: a saline accord with bite, less melon, more tidepool. Maybe pomelo or yuzu to brighten the opening, a cool mineral heart that leans tea-like, and a driftwood base with a veil of temple smoke. Keep the laundry musk on the dock.

If marine is a genre you abandoned long ago, consider these markers when you test Above the Waves:

• Does the salt feel textured and mouthwatering, not sugary-water?
• Is the freshness airy and mineral, not shampoo-clean?
• Do the woods read as sun-warmed and silvery, not amber-syrupy?

For context, here’s the current shoreline:

• Heeley Sel Marin gives you chic lemon and real brine.
• BDK Sel d’Argent is a soft-salty musk with polish.
• D.S. & Durga Rose Atlantic sails a floral breeze.
• Maison Margiela Sailing Day is the clean crowd-pleaser you’ve smelled on a subway.

ELDO rarely plays it safe, and the Mazu angle suggests reverence over kitsch. If Above the Waves lands as I suspect, it could be the grown-up aquatic that makes even the cynics — yes, me — stash a travel spray in their tote. Put it on your October test list, spritz on a humid afternoon, then wait for the tide to turn.