Review: Comme Des Garcons Luxe Patchouli and 888

I’m not feeling brilliant but I need to write a review – I’ve been dithering with other stuff here for way too long. But, given my febrile state, there’ll be no preamble (other than this, erm, meta-preamble), no discussion of CDG’s quirks and funny spots, no anecdotal asides. Well, that’s what I’m saying now. We’ll see.

These two scents are are very different points on my perfume continuum. One I think I love, the other I almost hate. Let’s start with hate first.

Patty and March have already written about 888. They both quite liked it, though neither flipped their lids when they sniffed it. My lid closed down with a clank when I did and I pulled my ugly wrinkle nose face. There’s a category of scents that I. JUST. CAN’T. DO. and this, for some reason, falls in there, with those two Soir Sisleys that I conflate in my brain.

Here’s what marvellous March said: ‘Here´s what I got: 888 opens with a huge blast of pepper and coriander, but there´s also a strong, old-fashioned classic cologne note. The effect together is effervescent and really, really appealing. Right away the tone is set: okay, we´re going to have fun here. If anything, I´d have named this one Play. I don´t get much metal, for those of you avoiding 888 because of the m-word. “Curcuma” suggests either ginger or turmeric, and I´m going with the latter – along with the amber and saffron that begins to dominate as the cologne fades, there´s a mustard-like note.’

And here’s what perfectly perspicacious Patty said: ‘I´m not sure I´ve ever smelled gold. but this is why I think it should smell like in an ideal world — slightly fresh, a little metallic, with the geranium giving it that weird, funky, almost rubbery {!?!} vibe. I´ll be anxious for you Daddy Warbucks readers who have smelled gold to sniff it and tell me how close it is. As a scent, it works for me beautifully — it is fresh and appealing on the surface, but has some strange things going on underneath that surface. I think of it like one of those beautiful lakes from Lord of the Rings. All pretty and mirror-like on the top, and some funky fanged fish swimming around underneath that beauty.’

Well, that filled up some space, and I do feel rough.

The end.

Just kidding! Here’s what lunatic Lee said: ‘Yeuch , I need to remove it! Horrible horrible top notes. Yes, it is effervescent, but in that nasty old Baghari way and I’m a total lame-ass (still) with most aldehydes. It probably doesn’t even have aldehydes but I don’t care (aside – I can’t check my one and only wearing of this scent – sniffed thanks to Patty’s unstinting generosity – cos I’ve shipped it on to its next victim); it’s a super-perfumey perfume number that’s doing a ‘Oh I’m here, take notice’ dance up my nostrils. Blech. So it’s almost bad chypre to begin with (good chypre – Mitsy parfum; bad chypre – aforementioned Sisley stink) rather than cologne. And it’s big – a demon of diffusion. It’s wearing shoulder pads, it’s gold lamé and shoulder pads. Did I say shoulder pads? It’s synthetics gone serious. I see why they had that one called Play now – cos all the fun is done. Goodbye Tar and Garage and all you daft little scents. Hello brash new world of glitz and high-pitched noise.’

That’s hyperbole really. I know I’ve offended lots of lovely folks there, but I guess I like my perfume to smell odd rather than perfumey. And this is, well, perfumey. With a sprinkling of agent orange.

Luxe Patchouli seduced me in autumn when I first sniffed it in London’s Liberty. I didn’t pay much heed to it that day, other than declaring it ‘mmm… tasty!’, but thanks to Louise sorting out a split, I now have a lovely decant of it (and generous bonus stuff- L, you rock!). I don’t often go along with the top middle basenotes blather you get in perfume copy, because for one, it’s never normally clear where each begins and ends as a great perfume merges its notes rather than jumps from one stage to the next. But, at the risk of being contradictory, Patchouli has three distinct phases. The first is Borneo light. March is right – it is Borneo without the cobwebs. A refined patchouli dominates beautifully. The second stage took me into an East Asian grocery – star anise perhaps, but also that whole weird juxtaposition of smells that marks it out as ‘different’ to the western nose. I can’t quite pin it down, but that’s what it was for me – the smell of Chinatown (Bond, take note. You have a/n usurper). The final stage is the best of all. A beautiful, truly dreamy immortelle kick that lingers and lingers, never becoming too spicy or too syruppy, but hovering, like a spirit, somewhere between courses, between worlds. It makes my skin feel better, and feeling better is exactly what I want.

Now, commenters – your job. Pick a house, any house. Which two fragrances are opposite end of the spectrum for you in all their scents? And tell me which way round they are of course!

The photo of helichrysum is from whitelotusaromatics.com – lots of interesting reading there; Dynasty divas (March ‘n’ Patty? ;-P) care of the Times online; spandex hell from American Apparel.