Serpentine

This is a fun little offering from CDG but it's not essential. Opens up totally naturalistic and grassy and then seems to get more and more synthetic and urban as it dries down. Theres a note that comes out at the end of the drydown that I recognize from CDG 2011, sort of a slightly chalky, somewhat sweet concrete note that I really enjoy. It's somewhere between fresh cut green grass and freshly poured concrete and Its very nice! The issue here is performance. It opens up strong but it's gone within 2 hours on me. I enjoy the 2 hours, but when I can wear the much stronger CDG 2011 (which come to think of, is a concentrated distillation of the best aspects of this) I don't see much of a need. 5.5/10 Edit: After wearing this a few more times, it's really won me over. While I still get performance issues, I've found that there is much more going on than I originally thought. Its a very unique and worthy offering from CDG. The clean grassiness in the opening that I originally described as naturalistic is actually interestingly futuristic. It's like grass that is somehow so grassy that it becomes some sort of dystopian replicant of grass. The individual elements are combined in such a clinical way that they make up an entirely new scent. The drydown still contains traces of CDG 2011/a new perfume, and it does lose some of it's fun as it goes but I think its worth a sniff for any CDG fan. 7.5/10

I absolutely adore Serpentine. I briefly had a store near my work that stocked CdG scents, and I spent some days sniffing them all and wearing a few before buying this one. A beautiful and brainy scent. Immediately attractive, but also intriguing as you mentally pick it apart - a garden of flowers, green stems, asphalt roads surrounding, cars and city smells in the distance. A completely personal reference: this always brings to mind a line from Steven Jesse Bernstein's harrowing spoken word piece, Face. He is being tormented by a school bully and "misty lavender donuts of shame" appear before his eyes. I think of this not because of anything harrowing or shameful in the scent, but because I see these holographic lavender-coloured misty donuts of idealized "pollution" when I smell this. A cautionary note: I returned to the office after spraying this on my wrist at the store to test it out (hopefully discreetly as scents were not common in my workplace). As I sat down, my coworker suddenly had a panicked look in her eye, and said, "what smells like shoe polish?" I quickly went into the washroom and scrubbed it off. I still bought it later that week because I'm a freak like that. But it goes to show how niche scents can bother, you know, normal people. I've since gotten compliments on it but I see this and other niche scents as something for me and people in my life who appreciate them.

Did not expect to love this, but I do. There’s something familiar in here that I recognize from certain sandalwood scents that makes them smell like sexy sweat, but instead of being sandalwood-adjacent, it’s wafting around with green and soapy notes. The green soapy note I can see how some people compare to Mugler cologne. But compared to Mugler this is airier, 3-dimensional, grittier yet cleaner, where mugler comes across as very flat (and a little disgusting when you discover the “semen note”). The asphalt plays the part of that gross cigarette smell a lot of modern men’s fragrances have but without making you smell like a closeted smoker. But the magic here are the aldehydes. It’s easy to screw up an aldehydic fragrance and make it smell like grandma or grandpa (looking at you, yuzu soda). But here they just augment the soap a bit and lift all those green notes into the air and make them sparkle. It’s easy to go nose blind to these and that’s why some reviews say it doesn’t last for them. If you find CdG Soda magical and want a green soapy scent with that magic, this is it.

Chromatic scale Serpentine evoked: White / Fluo Green / Silver / Black / Pale Pink / Dark Grey Some random impressions. Boatloads of aldehydes, *gunpowdery* spices, musks, incense, woods, iris-y notes. It evokes brand new spaces as opposed to brand new objects. Big warehouses. Concrete, wet white paint, linoleum, immaculate walls, industrial lighting, cars, subways, ads... To all of the above, add a smooth powderyness probably linked to some orris-related accord which provides a subtle perfumey vibe necesseary to preserve the fragrance from becoming a mere exercise in style. Absolutely wearable, novel and modern...which I guess are all adjectives to describe CDG. Once more, Austuguevielle's artistic direction doesn't let me down and, when it comes to modernism, CDG is confirmed to not fear any rival. A big winner. Rating: 7.5-8/10

It smells like bitter pine and a walk in a forest during late autumn. You have asphalt and fallen leaves which are starting to slowly rot under your feet. It is quiet, the air is crisp, as it just stopped raining. You're alone. But you are perfectly happy with that. My brother gifted me this fragrance when I was very young, it was... 10 years ago. Since then I switched countries and places and I didn't take Serpentine with me when I was moving. Recently my mother sent it to me via post and... it didn't change one bit. It still smells the same way it used to smell when I was way younger. I find it impressive the original scent survived this long. For me this is best worn when it's chilly outside. It's a beautiful, high quality, complex and unique fragrance. And, like almost all CdGs, it's not for everyone.