Comme des Garçons: Original

A good ten years before I started collecting perfume in earnest, I visited New York, and made a stop at Barney's. I'd always loved perfume but I didn't wear it much, if ever. I had an old bottle of Coriandre and a few other things, and I kept these in the bathroom cabinet, back when there was room to do such a thing. I'm not sure what I was doing at Barney's, or why I felt it necessary to go - but Comme des Garçons had just come out, and it was heavily represented on the first floor, and there wasn't much time wasted between smelling it and purchasing it.

A few years later, I gave my practically full bottle away. A friend really loved it, and it was hard to make an argument with myself for keeping it, given I never wore it. Several years later, once I had quite a few fragrances, so much that there was no more room in the bathroom cabinet, I was in said friend's bathroom and saw my old bottle of Comme des Garçons sitting there on the counter. I smelled it again and tried to remember why I'd thought it rational in any way to part with it. Within a few weeks I'd purchased another bottle online.

Marc Buxton created this fragrance in 1994, and while there might have been a few things like it at the time, I'd never smelled them. Intensely woody and spicy, Comme des Garçons explores now standard territory for niche (and even mainstream) perfumery - CDG itself has investigated nearly every facet represented here in its own range of perfumes since - and yet, nearly fifteen years later, the fragrance smells entirely new each time I smell it.

Interviewed upon its release, Buxton spoke of the freedom he was given - and the responsibility that came with it. Given carte blanche creatively, he was limited only by his conviction that the fragrance should be something one could, and would want to, wear. It is wearable, but also stratifying. The alleged medicinal aspects of Comme des Garçons waver on a line that divides opinion. That said, this is no Secretions Magnifiques. I say alleged because I've never gotten any such medicinal thing smelling it. I get woods (sandalwood, cedar), spices (cardamom, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, coriander), incense (frankincense), honey, and something which conjures rose. The overall impression for me is something as boozy and illicit as a prohibition speakeasy - a little wood, a little leather, the sense of something you wear with the intent of getting yourself into some trouble.

Comme des Garçons is long lasting but not hugely diffusive on me. It falls into a category I have no name for in my collection but which includes Black Cashmere, L'Air du Desert Marocain, Yatagan, Norma Kamali Incense, Monk, Moschino de Moschino, and Jubilation XXV, among others. What is that category, exactly? You'd have to tell me. When I feel like what CDG has to offer, nothing else, not Lutens, Montale, the Incense Series, or even any other fragrance in this loose category will do. Of all the interesting things Marc Buxton has done, this remains my favorite.

Stuff and Nonsense

This week I received a package of vials from Olfacta including all kinds of essential oils and absolutes.  Most of them I'd never smelled isolated this way.  There were:  myrrh, frankincense, civet, labdanum, castoreum, tuberose, rose, jasmine.  Many others.  I couldn't help myself and poured many of them into a mix I'd made a few days earlier.  The vials still smell, thankfully, so I can use them as references, but my own oil smells MUCH much better now, too.  The oakmoss she sent was particularly rich.  I'd smelled oakmoss at various places but nothing remotely this aromatic and downright mossy.  It was practically chocolately.  I've visited a few distributor sites over the last several years, wondering if I should dip into mixing my own more zealously.  Having smelled these, and dumped them into the same pot so impulsively, I know that would be a pretty dangerous (i.e. expensive) move.  But I continue to fantasize about my own little lab.

I've been watching a lot of old movies lately.  Mostly Ingrid Bergman.  I got a DVD set of three films she made before Hollywood "discovered" her.  I can't even imagine a time anymore when someone could truly be discovered, imported, and shaped that way.  Everyone discovers everything at this point.  It's all there, circling around the internet.  We're all flies on the wall and know every room, every little pocket of the universe, it seems.  People, things and places have maybe lost that same kind of epiphanic sense of discovery.  Of course, Ingrid Bergman has a life before Hollywood claimed her.  Judging by these films, a very full one.  She had a distinct personality and the studio bosses seized on what was already there.  But no one had yet seen it on youtube and it must have been shocking to see her on screen, over here, for the first time.  Even I'm shocked a little, watching her in these films.  She's speaking a language I don't understand and yet I feel I get what she's saying, because her face and voice are so universally expressive.  She was so young - and had such maturity in her youth - that she seems like someone you would have no choice, given the opportunity, but to want to know all about her.

I went from watching these films to seeing the premiere episode of this season's True Blood, which by comparison seemed harsh, shrill, brassy, and infinitely sloppy.  So much thought went into presenting and showcasing Bergman.  I watched True Blood wanting something that focused, someone that brilliantly lit and felt, to appear.  No such luck.  There's really no star power in the show - judging by this episode, which is trying to be all things to all people and ends up feeling like a room full of gnats vying for your attention.  The show's version of the shock generated by seeing Bergman on screen was to suddenly make Tara a lesbian.  I don't know, the tawdry aspect of this show, once sort of a cheap thrill, feels a little morning after at this point.

Abigail told me she is adjusting to the sordid heat of her new environment.  She went from hot and dry to hot and humid, which is as some of you know a very different thing.  Everything seems too much to her, she said.  She puts on perfume and it's way too heavy, way too thick.  Cloying, maybe.  People say this about our weather but I get the opposite.  Everything feels insufferably sheer on me.  My friend Jack says my problem is I don't put nearly enough of anything on.  I'm the sprayer's version of a dabber.  But I do spray profusely and it's just...poof, all gone.  About the only things that really bloom on my skin this time of year are Norma Kamali Incense -which I discovered, after receiving Olfacta's vials, is as much Labdanum as frankincense (who knew these were so similar in so many ways?) - and Habanita, which is rich and robust in the winter but rises from the skin with the steamy quality of hot asphalt in the summer.

I'm looking forward to the new Gaultier.  Kokorico.  Yes to cocao.  Hit the like button.  Yes to the bottle, which is fantastically tacky and looks like one of those novelty lighters good-time smokers and cocktail party hosts used to sit out on the glass-topped coffee table, right next to the cigarette dispenser in the shape of a dog.  Press the button and the mouth drops out a Marlboro.  Big ceramic lobster ashtray nearby.  Yes to another Annick Menardo fragrance.  Here's hoping it's less the sugar overload of Lolita Lempicka, more the rich buttery gourmand of Hypnotic Poison and Kouros Body.  Yes to fig leaf, naturally.  But I worry about "woody", which often seems marketing shorthand for Meh.

Mona Di Orio: Cuir

I can't really find an antecedent in Mona di Orio's work for Cuir, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. While several di Orio fragrances have been, like Cuir, pretty bold, they were also a lot skankier, creating a series of expectations and biases around the perfumer's work. Nuit Noire dries down to what Orio retailer Luckyscent refers to on its website as "a barnyard-y animalic dirtiness" which wasn't everyone's roll in the hay. Even Carnation and Oiro have more than a whiff of the underbelly to them. Cuir is no less an affront in ways I find appealing, but in an entirely different direction.

I like Nuit Noire very much, and when I read about Cuir, part of the perfumer's Les Nombres d'Or line, I assumed it would be an elaboration of that somewhat notorious fragrance. Given Orio's treatment of the indolic and the overripe, I expected Cuir would be a sort of apogee for her sensibility, a sublimely ferocious, unwashed leather. Cuir isn't unwashed, and it isn't particularly feral. It doesn't seem in keeping with anything else Orio has done--had it come in packaging other than her trademark champagne bottle muselet, I would never have attributed it to her--but it's a fantastically remorseless fragrance, and it bums me out that her reputation for a special brand of skank and an unfairly malicious and dismissive rap from critic Luca Turin might keep people from giving it the time of day.

Cuir doesn't particularly smell much like a leather to me, either; no more than Parfum D'Empire's Cuir Ottoman does, I guess. Luckyscent calls it carnal, and I can understand why. A few months back, I reviewed Incense by Norma Kamali, another arguably carnal scent, if by carnal you mean in part unapologetically robust. Cuir initially reminded me of Incense--the stuff is unmistakably strong--though for all its assertiveness, there's a weirdly unique delicacy to Cuir. When it first goes on, you smell the cardamom and the cade, something close to smoldering spices. The cade isn't so brutal that you can't make out the cardamom, so there's a balance going on there, but a tricky one, and Cuir very nearly tips the scale into overkill. Incense doesn't have that kind of tension. It has a glorious bombast which Cuir shies away from, if only just. It's full throttle, out the gate, and straight to the grave.

Both fragrances are smoky to the extreme. Incense is much more resinous, whereas Cuir smells more like something you'd walk through than on. Supposedly there is opoponax in the mix. Who can smell it, under all that smoke? More immediately apparent is the castoreum, which gives the affair something approaching wet animal hide, rode hard, put up wet, now roasting on a spit. This is really the whole story to Cuir, but this simple constellation of elements is more than enough, telling a bigger, more complex story than fragrances with twice to three times the ingredients.

I love Cuir, and I know it will last me forever. It's sometimes--okay, frequently--too much for me. A little goes a long way, as they say. But what a road that is to go down, even just dipping my feet in it. I believe there's a much needed place for these fragrances, now more than ever, and far too few of them. They adjust one's barometer, demanding of you a certain kind of attention and commitment. They cleanse the palate by overloading the senses. With so many fragrances pandering to lowest common denominators, endlessly dumbing themselves down, seeking shamelessly to be all things to all people, something like Cuir is a handy reminder of the refreshment a willfully difficult scent can provide.

From the Mountaintop: Norma Kamali Incense

As soon as I smelled this magic stuff, I knew I had to sign on and talk about it, because I waited forever to try it, and my hesitation had to do mostly with how infrequently I heard it mentioned. Incense couldn't be all that--it couldn't be too terribly fantastic--with so little being said on its behalf. I revisited the reviews on makeupalley again and again--one of the few places I saw it discussed--trying to find a common denominator in the general opinion there. Incense was said to be strong like you can't believe, one of those assault weapon fragrances which make massacre of your nearest neighbors. It was said to be linear ( like a bullet leaving the chamber, it moved straight to its victim), offensive, too bold to be tolerated. How could anyone actually wear his stuff, people asked. In theory, this sounded like my kind of fragrance, but the stuff goes for a whopping two hundred and twenty bucks, which is quite a sum for a feckless gamble.

I should mention: I'm not an incense fanatic. I rarely seem to back flip for whatever the latest craze seems to be, and I often resent the din of conversation centering around something which seems more about marketing than merit. Wonderful things have been done with Oud--I own a few of these things--but I grow weary seeing someone's mouth start to make the shape of the word, worried I'll have to hear more about it. Fig and iris were like Brittany and Kate Plus Eight to me. Where did these things come from? How long would they be cultural wallpaper? Would everything be brought to their level? The various permutations of these trendy notes fascinated me about as much as a photograph of Brittany emerging unawares from a limo, sans underthings. They were distractions, more than anything. Incense, for me, was just another one of these pointless celebutants. I loved some of the fragrances, the Comme des Garçons series, particularly, but for a while it seemed like learning to love the enemy, someone with whom you'd be forced to share a small cell indefinitely.

What drew me to Norma Kamali's version, I can't exactly say. Probably the idea of its force. I make no secret of my love for the stinky. This makes it into a joke, but really, for me, it's about embracing scents others make silly excuses not to like. My friend Bard says that when people say a fragrance is overpoweringly strong, what they essentially mean is, they don't like it. Which isn't to say some fragrances aren't loud. Poison is an intense scent. Amarige can be. Habanita is. But I'm always shocked, when I discover such pariahs for myself, how tame they actually are compared to these reports, and I've gradually learned to pay attention to the fragrances people dislike intensely.

I finally dropped coin for Incense, and I knew the moment I sniffed from the stoppered bottle that it would enter my top ten. I got the feeling it had always been there, on the list, waiting for me to join it. Incense is just about everything I might ask for in a fragrance, and so much more than a simple, straightforward variation on a them that I'm disinclined to call it by its name. Incense is robust but smooth, balsamic, charismatic, a little smoky, vaguely spiced, woody, diffusive, and persistent. It does smell like incense. It smells like a lot of other things, too. At the same time, I'm again thoroughly baffled, Bard's words aside, by the response to it. I don't consider Incense to be a particularly "fierce" or "potent" smell. I don't find anything in the opening which singes the nose hairs; nothing which resembles paint thinner or lighter fluid fumes. It doesn't tip heavily toward the masculine to me. The reports of its relentless linearity confuse me as well. While I do feel that Incense remains consistent from beginning to end, and while I agree it goes through no radical shifts, I suppose I wonder what fragrance truly does. Incense operates like a natural fragrance, shifting mercurially, full of nuance and depth. You smell it on someone and it speaks of a story. You feel there's something going on there, under the surface. Incense seems to collapse the idea of a surface, forcing you to sense depth. It has the kind of presence most perfumes are developed by creative teams to avoid at all costs. By this, I don't mean it's loud, or even that a little goes a long way; I mean that it has character and is unique.

Those who adore it and assign it top ratings like to point out that a bottle will last you forever, because you only need one drop. More strange praise, which I know now contributed to my resistance; why spend 220 bucks on something you can never have too little of? The truth is, I see myself moving quickly through Incense. I sprayed myself about five times in the summer heat yesterday and by no means or stretch did I scare anyone out of the room. I was working side by side all afternoon with a colleague and had no problem. Trust me, I asked. Incense requires no more or less application than any other scent that comes to mind, but, then again, like many of the fragrances I love, it's often most misleadingly described by its devoted admirers. It's the kind of scent you can't find the proper words for, maybe, even as it compels you to search.

Finding a great fragrance can be a religious experience, and you want to share the pleasure it brings you. It alters your consciousness a bit and leads you to see things in a different way. You want to shout it from the mountaintop. That can come off like proselytizing. It can also come across as superiority--something I often pick up from other perfume bloggers. I think I understand that. I empathize. Ultimately it's a process of trying to put into words, with some kind of definitive elan, why one fragrance has touched you more than another. In order to emphasize its greatness, something else must be less great.

Ultimately, however, the way a fragrances reaches one person will be very different from the way it does or doesn't connect with another, something we all know very well, however much we engage in dissecting the unclassifiable. We collectively pretend that we can reach consensus on fragrance: this, over here, is the good stuff; that, over there, that's the crap. The pile of crap is usually a gold mine, and gives away the lie of all these glorified opinions. Few have called Incense crap, mind you. But many sing its praises in a way which doesn't do it any favors, particularly when you consider that, had I heard it described differently, I might have purchased it months ago.

(The accompanying image is a photograph of a Norma Kamali dress taken by Mark Seliger)