Three Decades of Defying Fragrance Conventions: A Comme des Garçons Parfums Retrospective

December 12 | 5 minute read

Words by Izzy Wight

When Comme des Garçons Parfums launched its first scent in 1994, it was framed as the ‘anti-fragrance’ – a heady, complex formula that claimed to “work like a medicine and behave like a drug.”

For Comme des Garçons, a fashion house built on sartorial transgression, it was a radical move that made perfect sense. Can perfume smell like a demolished construction zone? What does an avant-garde scent look like? How do you distil the essence of a symphonist, milliner or magazine into a bottle?

These are questions Adrian Joffe, president of Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market, and his wife Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garçons, sought to answer. “We'd only ever done clothes and accessories. But I asked Rei [Kawakubo] if we could do a perfume and she said yes straight away, because it was just another way that she could express her values,” Joffe explained to MECCA founder and co-CEO Jo Horgan – a conversation which took place at the Bourke Street launch of the brand’s latest (MECCA exclusive!) creation, Zero Than Pink. “Rei said, as long as we're going to do it in our way, in keeping the DNA of the Comme des Garçons, she was agreeable,” he added.

It was the beginning of the brand’s longstanding collaboration with legendary perfumer and artist, Christian Astuguevieille – a partnership which has brought an extensive catalogue of fragrances that smell like the intangible.

“I think what we're proud of is that we've created new olfactory language... We've written the language of Comme Des Garcons through fragrance,” Joffe continued. “Like with the clothes, we tried to do parfums that didn't exist before, using ingredients together in different ways. And it's just been that long journey. We've kept up that for 31 years now.”

Here, in celebration of three decades of Comme des Garçons Parfums, we reflect on some of the brand’s most iconic compositions.

Zero Than Pink EDP

At the risk of sounding smug, there are only 150 bottles of Zero Than Pink in the world – and all of them are housed at MECCA. While the Zero scent itself isn’t new, the bottle is a limited-edition creation designed by Christian Astuguevieille, inspired by the concept of ‘pink noise.’ Much like the fizzy, minimalistic Zero fragrance, pink noise is pleasant and soothing – a consistent pitch that results in a flat sound (steady rain, rustling leaves, rolling waves). It’s a light, floral scent with a unique varnish accord – the scent of fresh roses and glossy magazines.

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CDG EDP

Launched in 1994, CDG EDP marked the brand’s foray into the world of unconventional fine fragrance. In a decade of bubblegum-laced body sprays and lightweight, aquatic scents, CDG offered something different; it’s heady, grungy and slightly medicinal – a fragrance that really should be an acquired taste but proves an unexpected crowd-pleaser. Opening with sweet notes of cinnamon and honey, it quickly moves into a cacophony of warm spices like clove, cardamom, coriander and pepper, finishing with a sticky, resinous dry down of styrax and sandalwood. A scent that zigs when it should zag, CDG was the perfect debut for a brand always pushing the boundaries.

Wonderwood EDP

Affectionately known in MECCA HQ as the ‘hot man’ scent, Wonderwood EDP is an earthy, elegant blend of cedar, cypress and sandalwood, rounded out with a healthy pinch of pepper and nutmeg. One of the brand’s most popular fragrances, it’s housed in Kawakubo’s now-iconic ‘pebble bottle’, a design modelled after a stone at the bottom of a stream. “One day during our initial working period, Rei arrived with a dark pebble she had found and said she would really like to make it into some kind of perfume flask,” Astuguevieille told The World of Interiors. “Since we had agreed that we wanted to do things differently, we went to a specialist glassmaker who crafted a bottle that would house a fragrance while still looking like a beautiful piece of nature.”

Dot EDP

An homage to Kawakubo’s favourite tree, the Japanese osmanthus, Dot EDP is crisp, delicate and bright. The scent is made to encapsulate the tree in its entirety, with green notes to represent the leaves, woody-amber notes for the bark and fruity notes inspired by the tree’s white flowers, which smell like ripe peaches and apricots. In true Comme Des Garçons fashion, it retains an air of unpredictability, a slight spiciness that clashes with the sweet in the best possible way. Featuring Kawakubo’s sartorial signature, the polka dot, the purposefully impractical bottle (it neither stands up nor lies flat) is a piece of art in itself.

Standard EDT

“We’d never done a perfume with a furniture company before, but Artek just made sense,” Joffe told AnOther magazine. “I already knew Ville Kokkonen – he was their creative director and a lovely guy – and we used to use their vintage stools in Rose Bakery at Dover Street Market London. He said, ‘You’ve got to do a perfume with me,’ and I said, ‘Sure.’” One of Comme Des Garçons Parfums’ many collaborations, Standard’s bottle looks like a meticulously carved concrete block, with a scent that’s gentler than you’d expect. According to Joffe, Artek wanted Standard to smell like a birch tree – woody, musky and comforting.

Odeur 10

If any brand was going to make a disinfectant-inspired scent feel desirable, it would be Comme Des Garçons – and that’s exactly what Odeur 10 is. Modelled after hydrogen peroxide, it's a sci-fi scent unlike anything you’ve ever smelt before – a can’t-put-your-finger-on-it mix of aldehydes, ambrette, mint and musk. While the fragrance is certainly different, don’t be deterred by the ‘cleaning product’ associations; it’s less synthetic, and more fresh, soft and fuzzy. As one Fragrantica reviewer put it, “Like if static electricity was bubbles. Really, really perfect.”