Comme Des Garcons Serpentine & Wisteria Hysteria: Two Big Winners!

Comme Des Garcons For Stephen Jones - Wisteria Hysteria

Chromatic scale: White, more white and even more white. Lilac, silver, neon white, microscopic black dots, imperceptible light-blue nuances, steel-cold grey.

Rosey / floral notes with a bright metallic presence and a overall synth-pop vein. The florals are the most distant possible from the real thing. Instead, they're a super abstract rendition of the smell you could expect from a olfactive holodeck on DS9. Incense is here in full force and together with spices provides quite a thick and potent bone-structure. 

As I said, the fragrance starts bright, clean and cheerful but the feeling it evokes is anything but natural. It's sort of like a sense of inner euphoria filtered through chem drugs. Hallucinations and horizontal dancing, mind trips at the borders of cosmos.

Incense takes over considerably and, together with sweetish notes give birth to a dry'n'sweet

accord that, at traces, brought to mind of Eldo's Archive 69 (overlooked gem IMO) minus the camphor.But beside the incense, they also share a certain lived-in vibe. It's not lived-in as in remarkably dirty but more like *humanized*. It's the warmness of clean skin with subtle animalic (humanoid) facets. 

Smartly placed juxtapositions provided by clove and smoky mate notes, preserve the fragrance from becoming too bright and cold yet, at the same time, they paradoxically enhance the overall metallic vibe.

I can't say Wisteria feels warm but it doesn't feel cold or detached either. It surely has both the elements of warmness and coldness but they're so smartly paired to give birth to a completely new feeling. Again, it's like showing to a alien reptile race what *body warmness is about*.

Potent, very long lasting and with a great projection. In this context, Wisteria feels like a collaboration between Comme Des Garcons and Thierry Mugler...if Mugler actually still had taste.

Rating: 7.5-8/10

Comme Des Garcons - Serpentine

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