Comme des Garçons

Founded 1969; perfumery in 1994 · Tokyo, Japan · Rei Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo has spent half a century making clothes that argue with the very idea of dressing, and her perfumery is just as stubborn: incense, tar, photocopier, metal coin. It is one of the few houses to have used the unpleasant smell as material.

History

Kawakubo founded Comme des Garçons in Tokyo in 1969 and landed in Paris in 1981 with collections in black, frayed and asymmetric, which the French press called "Hiroshima chic". Perfumery began in 1994 and refused seduction from the start: the Odeur series includes accords of ink and metal, and the Incense series (2002) portrays five sacred places — Avignon, Kyoto, Jaisalmer, Ouarzazate, Zagorsk — with real frankincense. Avignon, with its Catholic church accord, is its most-cited composition.

Iconic models

Avignon (2002)
Catholic church incense, almost literally. Among the most-cited perfumes in niche.
Kyoto (2002)
Japanese incense, dry and with cypress; the reverse of the above.
Odeur 53
Accords of hot metal, sand and tumble-dryer air. Perfumery with no flowers and no woods.

Worth knowing

Odeur 53 lists among its notes such things as "the smell of oxygen" and "desert sand". It is one of the very few houses to have composed without a single conventional perfumery ingredient.