Comme des Garçons has produced some of my favorite things. Luxe Patchouli costs an arm and a leg, sure, but oh how I love it. I finally caved and bought some. Far less pricey, the original fragrances are still, years later, astonishingly good, and up until about 2005, there was no going wrong for me. The Leaves series, the Red series, the Sweet series. Incense (2003) was a real stand out for many, including me. I liked some of the Synthetic series a lot as well. The Guerilla fragrances came out in 2004, and though they were fairly weak, as if done in watery pastels (albeit in stains the colors of raw meats and berries), they were about the last thing I truly liked, excepting Stephen Jones, Laurel and, to a lesser extent, Daphne.
Laurel is the second in the line's collaboration with Monocle. CDG now seems to have turned away from the series and toward one on one collaborations of this kind. Both Daphne and Stephen Jones were collaborations. Hinoki was the first Monocle scent, and I didn't care much for it; the world is short on great fragrances but full enough of very well done cedar type things. The latest collaborations, with designer Jun Takahashi ("Undercover"), leave way too much to the imagination. They feel uninspired. Laurel has had its critics, too, but for me it's instantly likable and compelling.
