Standard

One of only two bottles i currently and have ever owned (alongside CdG's Blackpepper which i also really like). I don't wear perfume super often, usually only when I know I'm gonna be around friends, but when i do it's usually this one. I didn't think i liked perfumes forever until i met a friend who always wears stuff i really like. He's a huge CdG fan and especially likes their Wonderwood and incense collection. I was looking through his bottles with him a couple years ago and he said he didn't really like this one, but I tried it on and be said it smelled better on me so he gave me the rest of his almost full bottle. I had never smelled any perfume like this. At the time I didn't know it was supposed to be evocative of a woodworking shop, but i didnt pick up on that at all and i still kinda dont. Really I couldn't figure out exactly what it made me think of and that was what made it so exciting. I definitely thought of some sort of factory, metal and rubber hose, which i found surprisingly pleasant. Lemon pledge. But at the same time somehow foresty, vaguely grassy and woody. Simultaneously industrial and natural. I didn't know perfumes were allowed to do any of this! The balance shifts around a lot as it settles and I still pick up on something different every time I smell it which keeps it exciting. Very well balanced and no single element screams for attention. Once settled on the skin it becomes a subtle and fresh aura. I don't think anyone would really notice how odd parts of it actually are unless they actually stopped and paid attention to it. In my opinion very versatile and easy to wear. I don't think I would have bought something this cold and austere for myself, but I'm surprised how much i like wearing it. Bottle is really cool too!

Wood and metal. The school woodwork classroom, tidy and orderly. And an occasional whiff of Finnish Labrador Tea - one of my favourite scents of all time. FLT does not smell like a honeysuckle. It smells like pickled ginger with something metallic, something animalic. And with a salty edge - coarse sea salt, and some desert dust. Fresh and unique scent, I wish I could give you a sample right now. And it's not just the bloom, the whole plant has this distinctive aromatic smell. Actually, I picked my first bottle of Standard because the note list mentioned Finnish Labrador Tea. I don't get the aroma in the opening, but there certainly is a delicate, haunting whiff of it when the scent develops on the skin. One of my absolute favourites. The notes are framing one of my best-loved wood notes - humble cedar - so well. This is a great everyday perfume, uplifting and fresh, but with just enough edginess and unique flair. Very silky musk base makes it last for ages. It's clean, but does not smell like laundry detergent.

I think this might be my favorite "woody" scent from CdG, and that includes the most popular ones in Wonderwood, Sequoia, Monocle series etc. You could almost call this one Wonderwood Intense as it has a similar woody but balsamic vibe but really amps the cedar here, bolstered by the spicy ginger. On top there's this kind of incense like aspect, quite different than the incense line like in Zagorsk and Kyoto (that take them into a different category for me) but a fresh energentic incense more than a liturgic one. In the drydown it gets a little smoother with the unmistakable note of saffron coming to the fore lending a creamy aspect to the wood not dissimilar to a suede creaminess but with its own smoother feel, as saffron tends to bring. It lasts a good while, isn't offensive but is interesting and the minimalist presentation works well for this too. One of CdG's best. I backed up this one.

In its way this is quite outrageous, but it is brilliant, beautiful, high art. Early on the lemon and to a lesser extent tea notes dominate, accompanied from the beginning by pencil shavings - refined, arty pencil shavings in a studio or loft, somewhere. The allusion to the modernist wooden furniture of Artek is not hard to find, either. It is intensely refreshing, above all in hot weather, and can be worn in a wide range of circumstances. It has a certain coldness about it, but not to anything like the invigorating degree of CDG's Zagorsk. And the drydown first brings the woodiness of the pencil shavings to the fore, before accelerating into a gorgeous smokiness that takes ages to disappear. Standard this is not, it's something special, with its strength lying in its understatement and surprising complexity. I love it.

I'm finding it difficult to describe how this smells, but I'll try because it's such an interesting fragrance. To me it evokes memories of hot Scandinavian (or Finnish, I guess) summers in a birch forest or by a wood cottage in the mountains. I think it smells like stained wood heated by the sun - a kind of incense-y smell - as well as lichens on hot rocks, dry heather and earth. It is so well blended that I'm finding it difficult to separate the individual notes. I cannot pick out the ginger, but it has some spicyness to it. Very dry, not so green in my opinion, more yellow, if that makes sense. I think it's a beautiful scent, I even find it a bit moving and I don't know why I haven't bought it yet. As unisex as a pine chair. It is funny that such a unique and innovative perfume bears the name "Standard".