Aromatic
Woody
Amber
Warm Spicy
Fresh Spicy
Citrus
Release Date1999
Perfumer
BrandComme des Garcons
No. 318 on
Most Popular FragrancesTop Notes
Well...Comme des garcons 2 is a really interesting fragrance in that it smells very oriental and does have distinct light and shade. This is the intention in the brief and I think Mark Buxton nailed it...Can't believe it's been out since 1999 and I'm only just getting my nose on it now. It's a complex affair a mixture of aldehyde and sweet floral notes apparently magnolia which I don't usually like but it comes across well in the opening. This is mixed with mandarin, it's lovely if not a little on the feminine side but in no way unwearably so. As I sniff through that and I get tea and incense which makes for an interesting balance against the sweet floral beginning and gives this a calming vibe. Not sure what ink smells like?...I'd like to think I do sort of know but I don't really get it in here. That being said I get the watery, calming, zen vibe and can imagine calligraphy and floral Japanese gardens with lilly ponds and all that good stuff so again I think 2 nails the brief! If you don't like sweet or aldehyde fragrances I would advise you to steer clear. The drydown gets decidedly woodier on my skin and really settles down nicely I'd say almost like ceder and vetiver earthy but clean and still sweet from the florals. A great complex fragrance (even more so than I've mentioned) where each note comes together brilliantly also has excellent staying power and fairly good projection. Comme des garcon 2 is a perfectly unisex sweet, woody, floral it's 'Floriental' I'd say...and a very good one.
CDG 2 was a major gateway scent for me—it was one of the first perfumes I encountered that really blew me away, and I continue to find it endlessly mysterious and intriguing. CDG 2 was formulated in 1999 by Mark Buxton, the nose wizard behind the debut CDG eau de parfum and many iconic scents for CDG and other houses, including Le Labo’s Vetiver 46 (and, recently, for new niche Hong Kong brand Oddity). Inspired by the art of calligraphy, CDG 2 is a complex chypre variant with a signature ink note which, to me, smells like a glossy magazine—specifically, the kind of thick fashion mag that has different perfume samples nestled in the pages. Lauded as a highly experimental perfume when it was launched, often described as “futuristic,” I think its effect derives from the interplay between the citrus, tea, herb, and spice elements, the bright, almost chemical-metallic aldehydes, the ink accord, and the floral notes, which come to the fore after a few minutes, melding gently with the soft spices and becoming more powdery without resolving into a conventional “floweriness.” It’s almost as though this perfume directly activates the nasal pathways associated with the pleasure of smelling flowers. It smells both scientific—I vividly think of a lab coat—and entirely organic at the same time. It’s highly androgynous and initially struck me as totally unisex, though over time I’ve come to feel that there’s a subtle, cyborg femininity encoded in its florals—still wearable by anyone. This scent shares some of the late-90s posthuman optimism of Björk’s Homogenic, a mood that I feel quite nostalgic towards, though I’d also say it’s perfectly timeless, invulnerable to trends. It’s a fragrance that I would be thrilled to smell at any time, though I don’t necessarily want to wear it for all occasions—it’s a bit chilly and bittersweet, even metallic or alien, but in a sublime way. Also, the bottle is perfect: the scratched numeral, the palm-size metal shape, the off-center cap? It precisely captures the fragrance’s combination of radical originality and inhuman grace