Comme des Garcons Series 6 Synthetic: Garage

after I dragged, this july 2011, my brother (the nose) & my hong kong girlfriend to the CdG boutique in a deserted sunday morning (thank you nico) in chelsea, under a 40 degrees killing NY sun, the tunnel entrance of the boutique was a warp velocity transporter (thank you scotty) to another place & another time (thank you brian ferry) . fresh, clean & somber, to me CdG recalls my '80s infatuation with japanese designers. yoji yamamoto, kansai yamamoto, issey miyake, kenzo & CdG's rei kawakubo. and it means paris in the '80s: place de victoire, rue etienne marcel, rue de grenelle & place des vosges. I lost track of the jap bunch in the '90s. now in 2011 I went back to search for the special scent of these lost years. CdG in the new millennium became very niche & made more fragrances than anyone can bear. unfortunately the synthetic series 6 is discontinued even in the chelsea flagship store. but, after spritzing a little wonderwood (wow! CdG 2 men without the candle, another wow!), a little dover st (splendid), some odeur 71 (oh disappointment!) I asked to a really beautiful jap girl in synthesis (thank you david bowie) if she had some series 6 hidden in her sleeve (thank you mick jagger). she radiated the most gorgeous smile (I don’t know why: perhaps series 6 is her favorite or perhaps she was so glad to get rid of the leftovers, or perhaps she thought I was so hip it hurts). she asked me to wait a little, went in the very hidden bowels of the store & returned carrying tar, skai & garage, telling that she had only 6 left of them. oh joy! I spritzed skai on my brother's wrist & he made something with his nose,I do not know how to tell in english, obviously in utter contempt; I spritzed tar on my HK girlfriend & she tried to slice me with her katana like I was a ripe melon. so I was the only skin left to test garage. I must say that even if tar's a flawed experiment I liked it & at that point my nose was too tired to feel skai, that is really faint & subltle. but garage grabbed me to my throat & it was instantly ME. this is not a fragrance review, ít's a mood description. & I will quote my HK girlfriend words upon smelling garage on my inner elbow. “I have a vision of you licking a pierced navel...” & I thought: “... of a sweaty hunk's six packs abs covered in motor grease...". after that there were no more words left to say. garage was chosen & I left the store with one more bag on my shoulder that really improved my shopping experience. gorgeous! p.s everybody thinks that this summer I lost my mind (or better my nose) because my july in NY scented of CdG garage, OdP chaman’s party & lelabo patchouli 24. I mean, each time I moved in the still, african-hot air around me, there was always someone sniffing around to see were the fire was, or were the road accident, with burning car's tires had happened. perhaps it was simply the hot weather melting the street tar. NY at its kinkyest...

If the word "garage" brings to your mind of Harley Davidsons, trucks, bycicles, cars or whatever you may have inside your garage, this is NOT for you. Comme Des Garcons rendition of the garage it's definitely more futuristic than a post-seventies motorcycle rider with a long beard and a leather jacket working on his bike. This is more the smell of a maintanance area where they repair and polish aseptic white androids designated as supportive doctors on an interstellar base. Yes, it smells of grease, oil, traces of kerosene, rubber and various lubricants but it's overall clean, extremly bright and...plasticky. It's a tidy garage, almost aseptic, with metal walls and a clean white floor illuminated by neon lights. Wearable? Probably not as much as the other fragrances in the Synthetic Series yet incredibly compelling and futuristic. More an odour than a proper body fragrance but nonetheless worth experiencing for its unquestionable uniqueness. Rating: 7.5/10

Okay, this is an interesting avant garde frag! I bought a sample of this, because I love Fahrenheit, which I think smells like my childhood garage with the gasoline driven lawn mover and dusty memories of artefacts. CDG Garage is a different smelling garage though. No similarities with Fahrenheit or the garage from my childhood home, except for the raw style. But I think it's a very authentic garage smell, from other garages, that I have been in. Heavy on the metal, raw material scent. Hard stuff. I get plastic, grinded iron, and that kind of stuff. Sounds cheap, but it smells expensive, because it appears authentic. Probably the least sweet fragrance, I have ever come across.

transfixed from the moment I encountered it. if you love the smell of the auto parts store but wish it had more of a sensual yet unsettling hotel room feel, then you will be too. the chemical crispness reminds delightfully of something surgical and sterilized but the organic notes are clear and nostalgic to counter. a little bit like witch hazel. categorizing it as significantly masculine is an overreach, but when is that not with fragrances? it's the perfect scent for every season.

Searching this and "tar" from same series for ages now. Had samples of both and adore them. Desperately needed!

it smells exactly like motor oil / an autoshop. i have no idea how to wear this, but i am obsessed with it.

Wow! Garage is just that.. A Garage in a bottle.. gasoline,oil, plastic and an industrial cleaner. It is a clean, but well used, garage vs a dirty, unkempt garage. Think ... A services department of a car dealership. Very clean and tidy, but the smell is unmistakable. Closing my eyes I can hear the air wrench taking off a tire and the sound of metal clanging on the clean polished floor. I get good projection and longevity on my skin. Garage is very much a casual scent. The more casual the better.. feel free to smear some mechanical grease on you if you like.. it would fit.. While this is marketed as unisex, I find Garage to me much more masculine than feminine. Bottom Line: This one is worth a sample.

As others have said, it isn't quite dirty enough to be authentically "garage." It actually reminds me of AutoZone. Mostly a rubbery new tire smell. An oily smell, like some kind of automotive lubricant. Not exactly clean, but not very grimy. Strangely, there is something herbal going on beneath everything; not sure if it's intentional, or if that is just the individual components of the accords peeking out. Another fragrance that seems hard to wear but isn't. I've worn Garage many times and gotten no weird reactions. Definitely different, not for everyone, but it's pretty inoffensive.

I never got to buy this but was impressed by a friend’s perfume and it wasn’t until he told me the concept that I associated it with a garage. It was just a metallic manly woody smell but it was actually amazing. I’ve never been able to get my hands on a bottle. Do they still make it? This would be my ultimate fragrance if I could get it. Amazing scent.

I’ve tried this a few times. While it’s interesting and smells like a car repair shop...I can’t fathom why anyone would want to smell like this. It’s just car cleaner chemical like. Armor all. Cynic cleaner. Nothing appealing about it

If you've read Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle then you KNOW this is what Adam Parrish smells like. It makes me miss my bottle of Bvlgari Black

This smells not like usual garage...:more like an auto body garage. Or maybe new car auto sales. Kinda windex+ leather

Childhood memory unlocked: I am waiting with my dad in the tire dept at Fleet Farm

After many months of searching I finally tried this in Dover Street Market in London. I was sadly a bit disappointed - I am a car and motorcycle enthusiast and I've spent a lot of the past 30 years around garages and working on cars and this smells *nothing* like that smell to my nose. (no exhaust smell, no 2 stroke, no engine oil, no gear oil, no grease for example - not that I'm sure you would want to smell like those things...) For the first 20 minutes I would say it was closer to 'hospital' than Garage! I got a strong TCP smell, with cinammon or some other spice. It's 8 hours later now and there is no trace of it at all on my skin. I would give it another try next time I find it but I'm glad I didn't blind buy it.

It smells like rubber and heavy gas on a industrial road. Very pollutant-like. Kind of intense. The drydown reveals a softness that I can't describe. As others are saying, it's very unique. I think if I wear this people will give me funny looks. I won't buy a full bottle but the sample I have...I'll be keeping it for when I need funny looks :-D

I tried it. What’s the point? Just go into your own garage and rub your hands on a tire. Splash on a little kerosene while you’re at it; the sillage is stronger. This is postmodern crap, just like the typical splotch of tar on canvas that sells for millions. This is also headache-inducing so be warned.

In the light of the 2017 reissues of Garage, Tar and Soda, I was most delighted seeing some fragrances I believed to be out of production for good, to be back - a nice surprise. Garage also takes me right back into what I remember from using the fragrance when it came out - and for my first impressions, without being able to do 1:1 comparisons, I consider it to be a pretty good replica of the original. The smell of thinners, solvents and industrial cleaners with a good dose of aldehydic, menthol vetiver. My enthusiasm is sprinkled with a few contextual considerations. To recall, between 2000 - 2008, Comme released on an annual basis a batch of thematically grouped perfumes, proposed an interesting stir up in perfume release mechanisms at the time - Series 6 could be seen as the pinnacle of this method, pushing what the company started already with their 'odeur' releases before, and arguably also in relation to the precursory, decade long works of the artist Sissel Tolaas - who is strangely under-discussed here - namely embracing and approximating some of the synthetic, industrial scent impressions. When these came out, there was simply nothing quite like it in the commercial sphere - this series sticked around for a few years and I remember the moment when DSM London sold them off for GBP 15.- a bottle. So far so good. Now reissuing these 13 years later, and having witnessed at least half a dozen of so called niche products, who's entire existence is probably based on Comme's general influence and maybe on that of Series 6 in particular - Garage appears a bit more perfumery than I recall it. A similar but very different moment puzzling the memory reconstruction might has been when the Helmut Lang perfumes have been rereleased a few years ago after being out of print for ages. With the difference that these were meant to be read as classic modern perfumes in the first place. So considerations were not touching upon how 'perfumy' they perform or not. As with Garage, and also Tar, I ask myself if they appeared more industrial, more anti-perfume, and especially more intense than what is offered now (the enormous throughput of the old 75ml bottle's spray and leakage in mind)- and Comme's idea of playing with the notion of the library, that of preservation, the archival all calls for a more detailed investigation.

I've been curious about this scent for years now, and I finally managed to get a bottle of it. Garage is really a unique scent and it definitely transcends the language that we're used to using when talking about fragrances. It opens with a strong rubbery smell, like that of a brand new tyre; you can feel it on the back of your throat. It then slowly transitions to that of leather upholstered seating in a new car, and then drops of gasoline and kerosene. Underlying all of this is a constant plastic and chemical smell. In the end it trails off to a more nondescript green aldehydic scent that is sharp and very fresh with a hint of tar. It ends up much more wearable after the initial synthetic hit. Sillage is good, longevity is long lasting. The name Garage doesn't really describe the scent well because garages come in all shapes and sizes. Comme des Garçons' idea of a garage is that of a showroom or a car dealership, maybe even a factory floor. It's aseptic and sterile, not grimy and greasy. It ever so slightly veers towards 'new car smell'. If you want a fragrance that smells of an old garage in a chop shop or spare parts yard; the smells of gasoline, lubricant, and dust; this is not the scent you're looking for. This scent is hermetically sealed and vacuum packed, it's clean and fresh out of the box, it's anthropogenic.

this fragrance reminds me of a lot of different things at once. i think of an actual, dirty and cold garage in the summertime. it's humid, oily and dark. then there's this guy too, someone i had a short romance with, about 11-12 years ago... this guy, let's call him michael. he was obsessed with this perfume. and he seemed even more smitten with it because it was discontinued and extremely hard to find at the time. michael talked about garage often. and for good reason, it smelled absolutely amazing on him. he had bought it second hand from a fragrance enthusiast in berlin, which made it even more exciting. even though michael eventually ghosted me, it's hard to forget about him and his obsession with garage. the scent became a sort of unattainable fragrance for me, since it was discontinued. imagine my surprise when CdG then re-introduced it a few years back. i immediately had to get a bottle, and it was just as good as i remembered. rounding off, let me quote one of my fav swedish artists, ji nilsson: "i can't help myself of that scent, baby where you'd get that perfume? so fresh and so clean clean i need nothing else just that scent, it's summer in my bedroom so fresh and so clean clean" read more of my reviews on instagram: @scentrified

This is the fragrance for the man who "hates to wear any EDT or Perfumes because it's too girly to do so." I have a friend who will not wear fragrance for that reason. He is an avid car lover and loves working on cars. The predominant scent in this fragrance by CdG is aldehyde. The aldehyde remains from the first spray to the end of the day. The other notes come out on occasion. This fragrance will remind you of a tire shop or a mechanics shop. The kerosene scent is there but not too much. You do get hints of leather. Like the smell of the inside of a new car with leather upholstery. My partner one day told our mutual friend of this fragrance. About a week later, we received a email informing us his fiance purchased this scent for him. He stated, "I never thought of the day were I would be looking for an occasion to wear this scent." There is always a fragrance out there for everyone.