[Rei Kawakubo] is interested in smells, rather than the business of perfume, a distinction pressed by Comme des Garçons Parfums’ creative director Christian Astuguevieille, who says he doesn’t like things that are ‘too beautiful’ or ‘excessive’ in their beauty. ‘Very beautiful things are, to us, suspicious, boring and unsettling. The concept of Comme des Garçons Parfums is defined without the notion of beauty.’
— Read more in A Comme des Garçons perfume is not ‘beautiful’ at Wallpaper.
Anybody who’s seen Rei Kawakubo’s clothing is not going to expect standard beauty in the fragrances. I haven’t smelled the majority of CdG’s scents, but I have smelled a fair few of them, and I have to agree: they tend not to be beautiful in any standard way, and a fair few of them are downright ugly (I thought the entire Sherbet series was just horrible, for starters). But I’m glad someone is doing it. Art isn’t all supposed to be pretty and accessible.
I liked the Sherbet series! But I do think they have moved away from the outlandish, generally. Maybe that’s because they are doing more collaborations than they used to….and most of the collaborations have been pretty and/or accessible.
Umm, my initial reaction to this was, “Well, aren’t we special and precious and pretentious?” But Pyramus has a more measured response, so, yeah, you do you, guys. My own personal criteria admittedly doesn’t put beauty first-beauty comes second, after, “this isn’t going to give me hives or anaphylaxis, is it?” LOL!
Ha, which is generally pretty low on my list of worries!
Yes, I deeply envy people whose immune systems are not hyper-reactive. When I was 8 or 9, my sister told me she thought I was faking the allergies to get out of doing chores. I was so mad, I told her “I will show you!” We went out to the open oat bin, and we both jumped in it and rolled around. By the time we got out, she was fine and I was already wheezing, and mother sped us to town and I was choking and close to passing out by the time I got a shot of adrenaline, which was awful, and had to overnight at the hospital and my sister got a lecture in biology from the doctor, she being a smart little girl who needed to understand the way the world worked, but I got an even bigger lecture from my mother about not being influenced by other people and always doing the sensible thing no matter what anyone else said or did. I am a big fan of modern medicine-wouldn’t be here with all the good work of those biologists and chemists!
I know what that’s like…I have had to go to ER twice in my life for an adrenaline shot, but thankfully never because of perfume!