From L’Heure Bleue to Vent Vert and Habit Rouge to Bulgari Black – the latter
being the colour of preference: at 40 Noir/Blacks, I stopped counting – the
fragrance industry has always borrowed from the chromatic wheel to name its
products, usually through adjectives. Now trending: serving up the colours
plain. Lacoste Rouge, Vert and Bleu earlier this year, Puma Green and Yellow in
June and in between, the new Comme des Garçons Play trio, Red, Green and Black.
The operation was a quickie, says CdG Parfums artistic director
Christian Astuguevieille, with developments wrapped up in two months, the idea
being to keep the scents as simple and approachable as the Japanese brand’s “absence
of concept is creation” Play line of tee-shirts, polo shirts and sweaters.
Unlike Comme des Garçon’s Red and Green series (Incense could stand in
for Black), the new trio isn’t figurative, but what’s striking is that most of
the notes used in each scent stick to the same colour as the name, a pretty
playful idea in itself, though the perfumer Antoine Maisondieu said he hadn’t
done so deliberately.
Play Red is built around a cherry accord – and if anyone could make a
cherry edgy, it’s Comme des Garçons. The trick, Maisondieu explains, was to
veer off the classic, almondy-sweet combination (heliotropine, benzaldehyde,
adding ethyl maltol for black cherry) by using a special quality of Tolu balsam
with a cherry facet, along with cinnamon in which he also perceives a cherry
effect. Red mandarin (i.e. the oil extracted when the fruit is ripest) adds juiciness
along with fresh/caramelized contrast of aldehydes and cumin; Safraleine – yet another
tone of red – gives a leathery edge to the blend, along with slightly rosy
facets.
The result is a tart, non-gourmand cherry with burning cinnamon-candy
undertones, as good-natured and cheerful as its namesake colour: my favourite
of the trio.
Notes: Red mandarin, pink peppercorn, Safraleine, red cherry accord, geranium,
cinnamon, osmanthus, myrrh, tolu balsam.
Play Green takes off with a huge, nose-cooling gale of mint, the intensely sweet “nanah” variety
used in Moroccan mint tea, which according to Maisondieu has a slight absinth
facet. Though the mint dominates throughout, lime and juniper add fizz, basil
and lentisque a slap of sap, while vetiver roots the leafy bouquet.
Notes: Nanah mint, lime, juniper berry, basil, jasmine, mastic,
ambrette, vetiver, cedar.
Play Black is the most masculine and offbeat of the bunch, a sooty-hued scent
with a salty flavor that somehow conjures algae, another tone of black to match
the powerful Madagascar pepper oil, layering over the matte metallic diesel
tones of oxides and sticky-smoky birch tar oil. Incense picks up the pepper in
the base notes. Lavender isn’t listed, but matched with the tree moss, give
Play Black a fougère-like vibe.
Notes: Black pepper, pepperwood, red
pepper, violet, thyme, black tea, birch tar, incense, tree moss.
Comme des Garçons Play Red, Black
and Green are available in an “accordion-box” three-scent set as well as
separately, adorned with the impossibly kawaii
heart logo designed by Filip Pagowski.
I’ll be drawing a set of 2ml decants of Play Red, Green and Black. Just
drop a comment saying which fragrance you know/own is, to your nose, the
reddest, greenest and/or blackest.
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