The difference between fantasy and reality can be either a fine line or a vast, chasmic gulf — in the case of Comme des Garcons Hinoki, it’s the latter as you come to realize the disparity between the calm, nature-friendly images their marketing hacks deployed and how toxic the concoction actually turns out to smell.
At the Monocle website, this is what it says about Hinoki: “Produced for us by Comme des Garçons’ perfumer, Antoine Maisondieu, Hinoki is a cedary, woody scent inspired by Japanese hot-spring baths and Scandinavian forests.”
Uh-huh. That’s a good one. I’m still giggling.
Here’s the official scent-note list from LuckyScent.com: cypress, turpentine, camphor, cedar, thyme, pine, Georgian wood, frankincense, moss and vetiver . . . wait! Did I read that correctly? Turpentine? Camphor? Well that explains the burning sensation in my nasal passages.
CdG has often displayed a terrific sense of humor when it comes to scent creation — their Synthetic Series is a sly wink and a poke in the ribs to the notion of traditional perfumery — but Hinoki just smells like a big “F**k You!” to anyone who didn’t grow up sniffing glue out behind the neighbor’s garage.
A reviewer over at Perfume Posse went all up in a swoon when Hinoki was first released, describing it as “ultra-woody and with the tang of the turpentine and camphor buzzing through your nose like a mentholated bullet” — as if that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I’d like a woodsy, Japanese hot-springs fragrance as much as the next guy, just not when it reeks like some juvenile delinquent kicked over a gallon of paint-thinner in the Zen garden.
The one good thing about Hinoki is that it vanishes off the skin in record time.
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