Comme des Garçons Series 3 Incense: Avignon – smoky and resinous and woody

Photo: perfumeniche

Incense is one of the most easily recognizable scents in the world. That’s because people have experienced the ritual use of incense in every major religion, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, ancient Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Shintoism and across many cultures for centuries.

Avant-garde Parisian fashion brand Comme des Garçons explores this history and common experience in its Comme des Garçons Series 3 Incense collection. Launched in 2002, the collection contains five fragrances, each representing a spiritual teaching: Avignon represents Catholicism, Jaisalmer represents Hinduism, Kyoto represents Buddhism and Shintoism, Ouarzazate represents Islam, and Zagorsk represents Orthodox Christianity. The one that resonates with me the most, given the Francophile I am, is Avignon.

Avignon, located in the Provençal region of southeastern France, is home to the Palais des Papes. One of the largest and most important examples of medieval Gothic architecture in Europe, the Palais, was a fortress, a palace and residence of the Popes from 1309 to 1377 when Avignon replaced Rome as the seat of the Papacy. The Palais remained in the hands of the Papacy until 1791. Today, the Palais is a designated World Heritage Site.

It opens with nose-tingling aldehydes that introduce a note of Roman chamomile that’s softly floral, camphourous and lemony. It’s fresh and luminous, with resinous facets that link to notes of balsamic-spicy, elemi, earthy, piney, smoky frankincense and balsamic, slightly spicy and slightly smoky myrrh. It’s a resin bomb for sure, but the balsamy aspects of the resins give Avignon a cool, dank quality. As it progresses, vanilla gives it a soft, creamy sweetness that balances the resins and bonds with a note of sweet, smoky, herbaceous patchouli that adds richness to Avignon. Patchouli has a woody edge that calls forward a note of smooth, velvety rosewood. Ambrette seed, warm, sweet and musky completes the fragrance.

Avignon is the smell of Gothic cathedrals and papal palaces with high, airy ceilings, cold stone walls and pillars, polished wooden pews and holy relics that have absorbed the odours of ceremony and ritual - burning candles, smoking censers - for centuries.

It blooms beautifully on warm skin and gently wafts and swirls around the wearer for hours before drying down to an intimate skin scent, that’s instantly recognizable as the scent of a church.

Comme des Garçons Series 3 Incense: Avignon is about the experience of being transported and being moved. And isn't that what niche fragrances do best?

Check out Comme des Garçons Series 3 Incense: Avignon in our Shop.