Comme des Garcons: Champaca, Palisander and 888

Weird and whacky Japanese design house Comme des Garcons receives critical praise by the barrel, but that doesn't necessarily translate into bottom line profit -- hence, their line of fragrances which they churn out with dizzying abandon.

Chandler Burr wrote in his book, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York, that "It's an open secret that fragrance is essential to the financial health of most of the world's luxury brands. A man I know once sat next to Yves Saint Laurent at a Paris dinner party. He asked, 'What portion of Yves Saint Laurent revenues are accounted for by perfume?' Saint Laurent replied, 'Eighty-three point five.'"

When your clothes, shoes and bags aren't raking in the bucks, it's time to fire up the perfumes, and CdG has flooded the market with an array of fragrances designed to appeal to pretty much any and every taste under the sun (Leaves, Incense, Sweets, Synthetics, Sherbet, Citrus, Woods and so on). Some of them are truly awful, most of them are decent enough, and every so often they really hit one out of the ballpark, a feat that can translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales with the proper distribution and marketing.

I've reviewed several CdG fragrances in previous posts, but I'd like to focus on three more: Champaca, a super-luxe exotic floral designed for the high-end consumer that doesn't bat an eye at plunking down serious bucks for the likes of Clive Christian and Armani Prive; 888, a spicy saffron perfume in a gleaming gold bottle geared toward the consumer on a slightly smaller budget; and Palisander, a woodsy floral with an affordable appeal.

Champaca: A tropical relative of the Magnolia flower, champaca is a rich, heavy ingredient, and CdG mixes it up with angelica and tuberose, both of which exhibit tart, green notes that act as a backdrop for the showy champaca flower. There's pepper for a little bit of spice and some white musk which, frankly, lends the fragrance a fresh, clean and bordering on soapy edge, but the musk also manages to emphasize the idea of green sap and crisp leaves, supporting the illusion of a flower still on the tree. The addition of cardamom adds a fleshy note in the base of the formula that's suggestive of decaying flower petals as the fragrance winds down.

As with a commenter on the NowSmellThis website, I would have preferred the inclusion of musk that was earthy rather than soapy-clean, but CdG knows their Asian market, and earthy/dirty doesn't sell so well in the Eastern hemisphere, especially in Japan and maybe not at all in China.

As a whole, Champaca is a peppery-floral, more tart than sweet. The price point seems to be a brick wall for a good number of perfume consumers, but if you've got it to spend, and you like the fragrance . . .

888: You want to smell like dusty saffron gussied up with a bouquet of geraniums? You got it.

Nothing really wowzy to smell here, and the marketing is geared more on trying to sell the fragrance as "the scent of gold" (replete with gleaming gold bottle) than trying to sell it for what it is: a bright, metallic fragrance that morphs into the scent of your kitchen spice cupboard on acid. You can rest assured that not many other people are going to fork over the cash to smell this weird, so whip out the charge card and revel in your individuality!

Palisander: Now that we've touched back down in the land of the affordable, let's see what a whole lot less money buys you with CdG. Palisander is part of the CdG Red Series, and it opens up a bit on the screechy side, like a can of whoop-ass paint fumes mixed with cherry cough syrup.

Champaca and 888 studiously avoided anything to do with the usual bizarro landscape of CdG fragrances, but Palisander takes a full-on, head-first dive into it. Is it a salt-lick lollipop? A cardboard box full of Red Hots melting on a vinyl dashboard?

Whatever it is, Palisander is not shy, and its neon sweet, sticky aroma makes me think of Hello Kitty switchblades and giggling teenage girls on a shoplifting spree. I'm not so sure this is as much Red as Las Vegas Fuchsia. Supposedly based on the smell of rosewood, but only if the trees come from a poisoned forest (I think the myrrhe really kicked it into the negative goalpost for me).

I'll take a second mortgage out on the house and snag a bottle of Champaca, instead.