Perfume Pen Pals: Comme des Garcons Rose Part 2


Katie,

It seems you don't like rose soliflores, which puts you in the same camp as Luca Turin. The jury is out on what I like, and I'm afraid it's heading for an impasse.

Dan


Dan,

Well no rose perfume's truly a soliflore, cuz they always throw a little musk or geranium or amber or something in there to rosy up the rose.

And I adore plenty of full-on rose perfumes: Frédéric Malle Une Rose, Perfumer's Workshop Tea Rose, Yosh Sottile, which many would consider pretty darn soliflore-esque. It's the musky soapiness that's making me angry in Comme des Garçons Rose. The same way it makes me angry in the new version of Chloé. And the same way wearing trousers makes me angry.

Katie


Katie,

But that's true of almost every perfume, rose or not. Under your strict rose-crazy guidelines, almost nothing qualifies as a soliflore. And if that's true, why does the word "soliflore" even exist?

I will agree there's a sizable dose of musky soapiness but I prefer it here than in, say, one of those terrible tributes to fabric softener by Clean or Philosophy. In fact, I'd be quite pleased if my fabric softener smelled like Rose.

You lost me with the trousers.

Dan


Dan,

No, you're absolutely right, one needs to draw the soliflore line a bit more generously, otherwise nothing would be included. So I'll modify my position by saying -- I do too like rose soliflores. But I still prefer Woolite's soapy rose to CdG Rose.

And re the pants: nothing puts me in a foul mood quicker than wearing pants. I hate the feel of all that fabric encasing my legs. It makes me feel suffocated and ugly and fat and really, really angry. Yoga pants, fine. Pajama bottoms, fine. Sweat pants, fine. But trousers or jeans bring the rage like nothing else.


Katie's rage. Now available in plaid.

And another thing, CdG Rose is so not a eunuch rose. Or even a narrow-hipped one. A narrow-hipped rose would be Paestum Rose or Voleur de Roses or Rose Poivrée, perhaps.

And the fact that you're all easy breezy with CdG Rose means that all your anti-rose talk up until now is horse puckey, because Rose is ROSE. Majorly ROSE. Have you even smelled this thing?

Katie


Katie,

See, when the first person is all emotional and the second person isn't, it's difficult for the second person not to sound condescending. So calm down, little lady, I only meant it was narrow-hipped in the sense of being rather thin (as opposed to the complex, full-bodied Une Rose, for example).

Paestum Rose isn't narrow-hipped, it's a masculine rose. Which, yes, means it's narrow-hipped, but you wouldn't bother referring to a man as narrow-hipped because it's expected. Same with Rose Poivrée.

Listen, I agree that it's majorly rose, but I don't agree with your use of the all UPPERCASE. It's a rose soliflore with a rather small footprint, which doesn't remind me of Aunt Edna at all. Have you even smelled Aunt Edna?

And yet I'm still curious about your stomping fit over CdG Rose because, to my nose, it's one of the most inoffensive things I've experienced. And that includes kittens, Doris Day movies and the Danish pancakes in Solvang. Rose is right up there with all those things.


Doris' kittens grew bigger than she had anticipated.



Is your pants rant trying to tell me something, that ordinary things occasionally induce anger in you disproportionate to their modest standing in the world? I'm almost afraid to ask, but have you had the pancakes in Solvang?

Dan


Dan,

Oh, the CdG Rose stomping fit was mostly in jest. I mean, I still think it's horrible, but in fact, it doesn't enrage me as much as being forced to wear trousers does. (That part, quite ridiculously, is not at all in jest.) But I don't think it's inoffensive, because wearing it gave me a headache.

Katie


Katie,

Yeah, I knew the stomping fit was in jest, but not the underlying hatred. You hate CdG Rose and on top of that, you got a headache from it? Though maybe the headache came from the hatred. We can hate our way into pain, KP. Look at Rush Limbaugh and all that OxyContin.

Dan

For Part 1 of Katie and Dan's tussle with Comme des Garçons Rose, click here.

19 comments:

  1. Katie,

    Not that I want to take sides, but your letter does have a hint of rage to it. I understand your rage about wearing Trousers. It the same way I feel about a Monkey suit and Tie. Tie is nothing but a glorfied noose for a prat!

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  2. CdG Rose was one of my first decants when I got into the perfume enthusiast subculture. It is simple, but at the time, seemed very different from all the mainstream scents I had been exposed to. It was also accessible and wearable. I bought several other rose soliflore decants at that time and thought they were the cat's meow: PG Rose Brulere and Prince Jardinier's Bouton Rose. Now, I cannot wear any of them and use them as room sprays in the summer. It seems I have moved on to weirder pastures.

    Speaking of weirder pastures, can I take this off topic for a moment and comment about Artisan's Nuit de Tubereuse and Havana Vanille? They both smell like corn tortillas to me. Tuberose more than Vanille, but still! Does anyone (anyone!) get that from them?

    Lastly, Katie, your pants rage crack me up. At one point I was going around asking everyone I knew what their favorite and most hated words were. Almost all of my female friends said: slacks. Second runner-up: moist. And third: panties. Now separately they don't have anything to do with this post, but if you put them together, I think we are on to something.

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  3. Thanks for your understanding, Gojira.

    dea, once you're on board the Thrillseeker Express, there's only one possible destination: Weirder Pastures.

    Re the corn tortillas niff, might it have something to do with the cilantro-y green spice thang in Nuit de Tubereuse? Sort of a burrito-by-association situation?

    The word "panties" sounds simultaneously babyish and pervy. Not a good combo. I don't have a problem with "slacks", other than wearing them.

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  4. I can't believe I've found another person who shares my general dislike, comfort-wise, of pants! I've always hated jeans; they make me feel like I am encased in cardboard tubing. I'd wear yoga pants, pajamas, or sweat pants all the time if I didn't have to work in an office.

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  5. Patty, I never understood the equation of jeans with comfort. They are the most uncomfortable clothes ever devised - at least for me. And they make me look as ugly as can be. That's because my body is seemingly built from mismatched parts left over from when they constructed all the correctly-proportioned people.

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  6. Ha! Yeah, me too. And "Slacks" -- that's all about slack muscles, slack skin, lazy slackers with slack butts and slack habits, dressed in pale-orchid waffle-weave poly-blend slacks.

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  7. I used to hate the word "panties" more than anything, but now I think it's kind of funny. I still can't say it with a straight face though.

    On the other hand I've never understood the problem with moist. Like say you're talking about banana bread (not panties). There is no other word that works better than "moist." (Assuming it is good banana bread.)

    The one I despise is "fondle." EW, EW, EW.

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  8. Elisa, I'm with you on "moist". Moistness is usually a positive indicator, whether in regard to banana bread or panties. Or even slacks.

    I can't really think of a word that elicits an EW.

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  9. Re: "panties": Is anyone weird enough to remember a Mason William's song from the '60's called "The Prince and His Panties"?

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  10. "It's a rose soliflore with a rather small footprint."

    No it isn't - it's a huge sudsy puddle all over the kitchen floor, and heading for the hallway.

    I hate "slacks", "panties", "moist" and "fondle", though I do love "kibble" and "tangerine". And when thinking of those waffle-weave poly-blend slacks, let us remember (fleetingly, before trying to forget again) the ones that come in a comfortable drawstring version with "2 inches of extra growing room".

    We are lucky over here that the word "panties" is not in general use. We call our panties "pants", which of course are your trousers. No wonder Katie doesn't want to be seen out in them.

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  11. Diana, I'm weird enough, but still I don't remember "A Prince and his Panties". But I shall make it my business to familiarize myself with it.

    flittersniffer, "2 extra inches of growing room" is a feature I like in all my clothes, which always feature stretch for dining comfort.

    I, too dispute Dan's Rose footprint measurements.

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  12. Katie, flittersniffer, I was about to abandon this dispute but I sprayed on Rose again this morning and again I smelled the same thing: a simple soapy rose, offensive only in its inoffensiveness. And there are a few people online with a similar perception. (Though I could find people online to support every crazy idea.) I remember Luca Turin writing that most people are anosmic to some musks and so perfumers will sometimes stack their formulas with several varieties to make certain everyone smells something. But what if you're not anosmic to anything in a formula full of musk? Might this be an example of that?

    Let's get the perfumer, Yann Vasnier, in on this, KP. Maybe start a regular feature: interviews with the creators of my least favorite perfumes. You can always open with the same question: "What the hell?!"

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  13. DEA- i had to respond, tho i've not sniffed the CDG rose and now have no desire to do so- i had a friend in college ( a Loooooooong time ago) who claimed the most disturbing words in the EL were 'moist unitard'. ick, i shudder to think!

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  14. Dan, I like your idea of getting the creators to 'splain themselves as to the reasoning behind the good, bad and ugly vis a vis their perfumes.

    And for my two cents, my current favorite word to say is "marimba". It makes me smile.

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  15. My favorite word to say is "mellifluous". I could say it all day. A word that exactly describes itself. And now, I have come to appreciate that the word "rose" does not.

    Dan, your comment about musks is well taken. I recently had the experience with CDG Wonderwood of finding it pleasant but rather weak. So I doused myself with 5 or 6 spritzes. 8 hours later I was politely told that I was gassing everyone within a 20 foot radius; I had no idea...

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  16. Scott, I have the same experience with Wonderwood. It's barely there, I overspray, then notice it's barely there for a very long time, which suggests it might be more than barely there for others. Thank goodness I work from home.

    I like "pugnacious" for the same reason you like "mellifluous": it sounds like it appears, it resembles itself.

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  17. cdg rose is bizarrely meh isn't it- and their stuff is usually so so good. I think rose has just been done better- and you need some expensive oil in a good rose scent. I like tea rose too though and that's not pricey so that disproves that. Hum. I think you can do a lot worse for a rose than Stella- the amber makes the rose sing, but she's got a deeper more alto voice and she's a bit husky

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  18. So agree with you, Rose. Je dig Stella's alto croon, too.

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