Have you ever popped a pod of touch-me-not? That’s the
feeling Amazingreen gives off: a burst of tiny sappy tendrils peppering the air
with slate-grey seeds. Pop! A burst of green in the nose, as sweet-fresh as
spearmint though without the nostril-searing effect, followed by a tougher puff
of airborne stone.
Nature provides countless ways of saying “green”, and
Comme des Garçons seems dedicated to exploring them. It already devoted an
entire, figurative series to leaves in 2000, and very recently launched a
just-plain-Green as part of its Play trio. Amazingreen, which seems to
follow up conceptually on Wonderwood as the "ultimate" interpretation of a note, comes in the gorgeous “pebble” of the
original eau de parfum in a pearly-metallic forest-green finish, nested in a
sheaf of green sheets of paper cut out to fit the bottle.
In French, feuille
is the word for sheets of paper and leaves: I don’t know whether the pun inspired
the packaging, but I wouldn’t put it past CdG, for this first collaboration with the IFF perfumer
Jean-Christophe Hérault, to have indulged in some sort of poetic association
for the two main green/mineral accords: from green to spring, and from the
explosion of green in spring to a note that actually conjures the idea of
explosion, gunpowder. Or perhaps the green/mineral idea stems from Hérault’s
fascination for lentiscum and the smell of freshly renovated homes overlaying
that of old stones, which he waxed enthusiastic about in Le Nouvel Observateur when questioned on the scents of spring. Or
then again, Amazingreen might be an oblique study of vetiver and its rooty,
smoky, flinty facets – the latter, stretched out with a hint of sulphur
(naturally present in tropical fruit and blackcurrant), sparking off the
gunpowder effect…
While Amazingreen may not quite be as maximalist as
its copy claims – it hasn’t got the hugest volume and is only moderately long-lasting – or as explosive as its
gunpowder accord would suggest, it is joyful and eccentrically elegant: just
the thing for a Kalachnikov-toting guerilla dandy in the jungle. Or maybe for a
kid with a popgun pretending the garden is the Amazon? After all, there’s
always been a childlike sense of playfulness about Comme des Garçons…
Top picture sourced from Seamoon on flickr
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Wait - what the heck is that thing in the photo?
RépondreSupprimerAmy, that lovely little thing is the touch-me-not pod mentioned below, once it's exploded, which happens at the slightest squeeze (hence the plant's name).
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