Odeur 53 by Comme des Garcons

Odeur 53 once promised (I read it on the metal box I keep in my case) to smell like the freshness of oxygen, nail polish, cellulose, metal, pure mountain air, sand dunes, fire, electricity, clothes drying in the sun, burnt rubber, the mineral intensity of coal, and burning stones. Years ago, I also heard it was said to smell like a baby’s breath. Well. The first part is mostly false. To some extent, yes, it can hint at all those scents, but it’s a combo where you never truly smell them individually. It’s an oddly warm, ozonic, mineral peat. However, the last part is very true: Odeur 53, from the dry-down and especially as it settles, smells like baby breath. Not a baby perfumed with typical cologne water, nor even powder… just pure baby breath or fresh saliva from a healthy person. Exactly as it sounds. The opening phase is extremely strange—have you ever smelled poppers? Odeur 53 at first feels like a more volatile, refined popper… it gives the impression that if you spilled the liquid, it would evaporate instantly, like nail polish remover or that drug. It feels somewhat repulsive, and I admit, addictive. It makes you gag, yet you keep sniffing your wrist. It’s a disgust that’s somehow amusing. As I mentioned, the interesting part happens around twenty minutes in, when it transforms into a major Woody Musky Floral scent, yet with a minimalist intent, neither feminine nor masculine, creamy with a dirty edge, and at the same time very synthetic and artificial. I’m not talking about the artificial smell of generic perfumes today. No, this is an intentional, lab-made, aseptic artificiality. From here on, associations kick in: you smell beach sand, then it tries to form something resembling piles of rare musky clay—I’m not even sure if it’s sawdust or clay, I even smell crushed stones, sun-warmed pebbles, and a vague idea of difficult-to-define water. This perfume smells like all these bizarre concepts. But above all, it stands out either as baby breath or as human skin just moments before a sexual encounter. Can you capture that electricity between two people who desire each other in a perfume? In Odeur 53, I feel it. Something very strange: that duality between the artificial, synthetic opening (in terms of scent and concepts) and the carnal, subtle, musky, even innocent dry-down, which smells exactly like a child’s saliva—never bad-smelling, even the smell of a passionate kiss, with that sour, metallic, semi-sweet tang of saliva. This is a very weird perfume. When I say weird, I mean incredibly weird. Because wearing it makes you go from thinking you’re being pranked to instantly changing your mind, over and over. When you wear it, you’re wrapped in absolute disgust and the feeling that what initially seemed a repulsive industrial compound has turned into a perfume with woody, floral, and musky nuances, presented intimately as cologne with a creamy touch… and it’s deeply disorienting. Long-lasting with a moderate, intimate trail. Also, I think due to the sheer number of abstract sensations this Odeur 53 contains, it wouldn’t be suitable as a bomb that projects three meters away. It’s a perfume to be detected very close. There are very sexy perfumes, like certain orientals, but no matter how good their intention is, in most cases they hit a reality check: if the person wearing them isn’t attractive to you, they might wear pure civet essence mixed with honey and sandalwood, and it’ll make no difference. Ultimately, if there’s chemistry between two people, it doesn’t matter if they’re wearing Gaultier 2 or Sport Man; you’ll like them equally. With Odeur 53, I make an exception. Without mannerisms or ornaments, beneath its strangeness lies a very, very sexy perfume. Strangely sexy.