Comme des Garcons 2011

[JUNE 2021] 1 [PERSONAL THOUGHTS:] Stand by! A lot of artists seem to love CdG so I thought its time to chip in! This was one of my first perfumes I bought with my own (perhaps) money. I'm still pretty blessed to have quite a lot of the juice of CdG 2011 to try now and then. Even if it's quaint in immersive-realistic ingredients since I've tried other avant-industrial fragrances since this is still good! Everyone's basically described this perfume perfectly. I don't feel I can add anything else, objectively except... Personally for me it smells just like the air that whirred from my old Windows 2000 PC complete with Altec Lansing speaker wool fuzz. I like that it even smells like the casing that housed my old "100 Free Games" discs we got from the occassion trips with Grandma to Chinatown back when I lived in Asia. Its a compact experience of this very plastic time as a kid born before the early 00s in a bottle, but about as small in sillage as those pink plastic toy phones that play D. K. Smile's Butterfly (which depending on what you had then might be just enough!) Time-skip to 2021 and we are now in a post-CdG art world where net artists are now old enough to contribute to their experience as digital natives, and established technophiles and engineers are creating hyper-real experiences with chemicals. Coincidentally with the alarming rate technology hyper-accelerates and is improving, the post-internet world introduced a global synthesis in the arts via cross-pollination within the industry, which with such seemingly different worlds of art, has proven with interesting creations never before seen. 2 [CROSS POLLINATION OF ART: THE RELATIONSHIP OF FRAGRANCE, ART, SOUND VIA TECH, SYNTHESIS AND CHEMISTRY] ADDENDUM: Delineating some nuance here for non-trans ppl reading (w this note on top) that even is SOPHIE was both trans-humanist and trans-person, the experiences of trans people and transhumanists are completely separate things and should never be confused as one or the other. I'm coming from this as a non-binary person where I tend not to think of established modes of gender, which can be very real and especially important to binary trans and transhuman ppl. *Also SOPHIE does not like being referred to by any pronoun when discussing SOPHIE's work and their relation with surrounding studies of art. (Also do not conflate me completely with tech-humanism, which sees tech-devices and humanity as equal. Letting you know, I'm personally more "post-tech" where the needs of humanity and ecology must never be forgotten in advanced technology, and that personally clarifies that tech must never be designed against the needs of humanity, lest we become dehumanised under our own technology. Also Kawakubo, while working in a similar ethos of avant-industrialists; trans-humanists is very much still Cis-femme. Reason why this is discussed, below:) Akin to a perfumer working with laboratory chemicals, the beloved sound engineer / conceptual legend / post-humanist SOPHIE through sculpting and painstakingly-layered, proportionally-EQ-modified, exaggered waveforms created a cartoonised, hyperreal world of sounds impossible in the restraints of physics in reality. Much like how olfactory chemicals create experiences too real, curated, or surreal to exist, in the world of SOPHIE, PVC balloons and bubbles seemingly twist, melt, and animate in their own accord. Metal folds into each other like glass, or bubbles like falling water, fades into hot steaming air. Glass sounds like water, or a chewy lemon. The sound of one's breath swallows a whole universe and breathes out stars in the galaxy of their body. Pianos sound like 600 foot mountains. Things bounce, transition, appear, or disappear too fast like 3D Animated CGI. And it's pop! Point is that despite having now lost SOPHIE, our post-digital, hyperaccelerated world so strange and so fast since last decade has introduced means and modes of art that our past-ancestors could only scratch the surface of. Now thanks to artists like CdG's Rei Kawakubo and SOPHIE, what it means to be art and how one achieves such goals can be alien, bizzare, and truly wonderful that we are the species with the capacity to abstract and create such things into being. And not just in tangible touch and sight either. Sound and smell... these senses can be quite interconnected but now more so with how hyperreal such once unthinkable theoretical concepts can "be". It is the beginning of 2020 and the contributions of creators conceptually similar to, or directly inspired by CdG (or in theory, from past writers) means that CdG 2011 is now surpassed in the throne of the super strange / bizzare, the futuristic, the post-human (even "super-man!") . Here are some suggestions for very interesting synthesised constructions to consider in the world of fragrant art! 3 [RECOMMENDATIONS] FOR FANS OF CDG 2011: Jump into the deep end with The Door by D. L. Roelen for an updated take of the very rare CdG 2011 if you're satisfied with the idea of smelling like a work of architecture yourself. Try Aether's Ultrae (vapor smell of hot TV screens, melting plastic and newly unpackaged store computer electronics) and Step Aboard's Bosco Sopeso (digital post-cryogenic garden in a 480-feet bio-organic neoprene skyscraper), and Barrois' Ganymede (first high-definition real-quality smell of a pvc-carbon printed-plexiglass spaceship!) This is only a taste of how evocative our man-made chemicals have become. We already know perfumes can far exceed our legendary predecessors. Perhaps, at times, feel free to enjoy art made not just for grand natural statements (didactic art can only go so far!) but simply because we have the luxury to experience art that exists for itself: art for art's sake. ..If that's what you wanna do! 4 [IN CLOSING:] The industrial / futuristic / architectural genre's really fun, especially if you're a jaded concept artist who, after years of academic and personal study learning historic classics, feels they've seen everything. Onto the future world envisioned long ago, now beginning before our very eyes, circa. 2020! What shall we, in our current generation, contribute from here? As SOPHIE (or Kawakubo, in vague koans) once said: anything you want! Any shape, form. Perhaps soon we won't need a story to explain why we as humans, post-humans, and our art must "exist." In such works of art post-CdG, post-hyperacceleration and on its way to post-industrial (as long as we're still around, hope!) let's support and contribute to such artworks like these which glimpse an experience of a world where technology rules us *without* not being aware of what our creators and savvy technophiles don't want: to have to live in these awe-moving, soul-shaking but inhumanly crushing dystopians far into the imagined futures of such works... which is actually just literally IRL RN, exaggerated and in a cute carry package! Can't have cyberpunk without the punk ^//^ Anyway, I'm so happy to experience, create, engage, indulge more stuff like CdG 2011! And houses and furniture and clothes are so cool these days, right? Now we get to experience and create such cool future things perhaps even stranger and inhumanly-real than CdG out of chemical air, especially as we continue to stay alive(!) ...hopefully, as we are attempting an existential crash landing, these technological things they fawn of that we also sure love to use may be used by a growing majority working together to also help us succeed in soon being at peace with our man-made creations, and repair the world of ours post-haste; and in turn of repairing the vessel which carries our souls: the world, to repair ourselves, at last we may achieve: the immaterial. (Wow what kind of strange awesome world can we make exist starting today! Is it possible to transcend or improve what is human or beautiful or art or our world any more than now...? What if in such world we didn't have to attempt to a "crash landing" because there was no "pilot." Ooo...!) Maybe we can start making interesting art answers by asking interesting art questions. (ex: Are there molecules that make you smell as yourself in an alternative form, age, material, or gender? Hi mom!) PS: And to think I shared all this thanks to all these new cool bottles, sounds, and smells. something something art art power of art *giggles* (Happy pride month!) (Also they're permanently selling CdG 2011 again at the Melbourne Comme Des Garcons e-shop-- enjoy! Local to Australia, and online only!)

So, where to start? Here: Comme Des Garcons at its finest! If you've been compelled by the most avant-garde deliveries from this house such as Odeur 71, Odeur 53, CDG for Stephen Jones, Guerrilla 1 or their Synthetic Series, you're in the right place as "Eau De Parfum (2011)" moves in the same direction of their most abstract/industrial/conceptual/ pushed-to-the limit type of stuff. All the CDG's hallmarks are here including the bottle that doesn't stand up on its own, but what it smells like? A floral leather! Well...sort of. If this definition brings to mind of Chanel Cuir De Russie, Jolie Madame, Tabac Blond, Cuir De Lancome or Knize Ten be aware that this is nowhere similar to any of them. The rendition of the floral leather represented in "Eau De Parfum (2011)" is similar to what Kazimir Malevich achived with Suprematism in the meaning that a Suprematist is associated with a series of aerial views rendering the familiar landscape into an abstraction... In this context Eau De Parfum represents both the florals and the leather in a sort of familiar yet completely "new" way. Flowers are mechanical, industrialized, alien, stylized yet clearly flowery. The leather (achived with a considerable dose of safralaine) smells aseptic, brand new and treated but at the same time is able to provide a remarkable warmness and a touch of humanity to this robotic monster. Eau De Parfum (2011) is surely an android but with a big red and pulsating heart...and a tad of sweetness. To all of the above you have to add something even more chemical that is what they call "Industrial Glue" and "Brown Sticky Tape". In this phase Eau De Parfums delivers exactly what he promised: the most true to life rendition of Brown Packing Tape and Bostitch Glue. Two of those type of smells that usually don't belong to body fragrances but we all still love (same as for gasoline, kerosene, steam iron, wet soil, brand new cars, tar and the likes). In this context the mastery of the perfumeur was to blend all of the above elements into a fragrance that results very wearable, comfortable and naturally plausible. Far form the typical approach we're used in traditional perfumery but nonetheless fascinating. Wondering if this is more a smell than a proper fragrance? NOT AT ALL. The new Comme Des Garcons is a terrific perfume, modern yet extremely solid, very distinctive, versatile and easy to wear but it's surely not for everybody. Personally I've never smelled something like it. Lasting power is very good as well as projection. Since 1994 Comme Des Garcons is confirmed to be the reference house for avant-gard, innovative and futuristic compositions (not to talk about their fashion collections) and after almost two decades we're so glad to discover that they still have a lot to add on the table. Kudos! One more consideration: One of the most common concerns when Comme Des Garcons announced the launch of this fragrance was the presence of safralaine (an aromachemical that smells somewhere between saffron and leather) that was previously included in their 8.88 with a disastrous result. Let me reassure everybody saying that the new Eau De Parfum shares absolutely no similarities with 8.88. The safralaine here is very well blended, never overdone or too prominent and used mainly to provide a leathery feel. Rating: 8.5-9/10

When I first smelled this, I was immediately transported back to the summer of 1995, 16 years old, working at the Big Value Outlet, a local discount store chain, handling inventory and there was the smell of industrial fumes that I recall learning to quickly associate, Pavlov's dog style, with a paycheck so that I could buy 70s and 80s new wave CDs like Joe Jackson and XTC at Strawberries. CDG 2011 does capture that distinct smell of adhesives and packing tape, but I will also agree with others that it also evokes the heated dust on electronics (I love another reviewer's comparison to that of a floppy disk entering a hard drive). It also evokes new ink cartridges and toners for copy machines—a Xerox accord, shall we say? However, after the first ten minutes, what is clear here is all of this orbits around what smells like the often most fragrant darker purple varieties of lilac, with their delightfully pungent headiness. There is also a ton of anisaldehyde here, which reminds me of the blooms of certain hawthorn trees like Crataegus monogyna, also pungent with facets of aniseed and indole. Then there is this brilliant use of Safraleine (saffron-leather) that elevates the overall effects. So what happens is that the post-modernist synthetic concept ends up evoking natural smells concurrently, or, at certain stages, there is this olfactory ping-pong of sorts. I love this intrigue: it's refreshing to approach something like this when so many recent efforts to be artfully niche, listing natural ingredients used, with their terroir indicated, end up seeming rather crude and harsh in comparison (I've sampled way too many new releases so far this year that are absolute duds). Here, with CDG 2011, we find Antoine Maisondieu being allowed to push the boundaries but still deliver what is a cohesive, balanced composition. To include the plot twist of lilac and hawthorn blooms in the middle of a hydrocarbon fantasy, still hints at the warm and organic even amongst its futuristic artifice. That's what makes this absolutely brilliant.

Opens with a pretty strong, post office/fed-ex-esque smell. For someone who has always been weirdly drawn to chemical odors, like gasoline and epoxy, the glue note here is sublime. The glue and tape tend to dominate at this point. Stepping into a small post office filled with cardboard boxes, envelopes, packing peanuts, and tape everywhere. Overhead fluorescent lighting creates a harsh yellow glow. Just past the opening, a bit of the synthetic harshness has subsided, and a more spacious, complex atmosphere is opened up. The glue is still dominant, but as a whole it is much more atmospheric. A kind of ethereal, musky powder lingers in the background, supporting the harsher notes in an inventive harmony. Opening new electronics parts from ebay in the workshop. You crack open the window to let in some fresh air. After a few hours, the synthetic scent of glue barely lingers, but is still detectable. The scent is much softer and much quieter now. Delicate flowers send out pleasant rays of sunshine. A honey-like nuance is apparent as well. This is where the fragrance begins to smell somewhat like a more traditional women's floral perfume, but it is still refracted by the barely-detectable industrial notes to conjure a strange nostalgia. A constructed memory of a meadow. Overall, a great fragrance, very wearable, but less versatile. Tells a fantastic story that I won't forget. side note: While it doesn't smell like Dior Fahrenheit, I notice a spiritual similarity with the gassy, leathery, hydrocarbon opening that morphs into a woody floral.

So strange and so intoxicating. Right off the bat I get an incredible amount of brown scotch tape backed up by glue and aldehydes. It's like ripping open and unraveling a brand-new roll of brown scotch tape. I personally love the smell, but I definitely don't think the initial is very wearable. You WILL smell like brown scotch tape. Thankfully, in terms of wearability, I think it settles down rather quickly. I'll still get brown scotch tape throughout its life on my skin, but it fades away and melts into the other notes beautifully. It becomes more of an ambiguous, nostalgic sort of scent rather than tape. When it settles down... God this stuff is good. Close your eyes. Imagine you're in a corner office, dozens of floors up, with big glass windows overlooking the city. You are the most beautiful, Platonic form of a stapler, or maybe a paper organizer, sitting on the office desk. That's what this fragrance makes you feel like. Non-binary office stationery. The aldehydes make it so clean and so neutral, a beautiful space for the very light florals, leather, and musk to romp around and blend together. I think it's really well-blended, it's hard to pick up distinct notes after it dries down a bit; I think that lends to the intoxicating nostalgia and genderless-ness of the fragrance. I keep smelling it to try and figure it out, placate it into something neat and easy to know, but it refuses that in this gorgeously airy, light, and clean way. Insanely wearable considering the notes when you get past the first 30 minutes.