I’ll spare you the hand-wringing and damp eyes that often accompany discussions of the original 1999 version of Yohji Yamamoto Yohji Homme — there’ll be little talk of the dreaded, but inevitable, reformulation, and no repetition of the glowing reviews of yore. As they say: what’s done is done…what’s gone is gone. Anyway, I don’t think I ever smelled the original version of Yohji Homme; if I did, I probably dismissed it immediately (fourteen years ago, I was not a lover of spicy fragrances).
Perfumer Jean-Michel Duriez developed Yohji Homme; perfumer Olivier Pescheux was assigned the task of updating the defunct Yohji Yamamoto perfume line for re-release. I wonder if Pescheux was nervous, given the widespread love of original Yohji Homme?
Yohji Yamamoto said of Yohji Homme: “The scent follows the funny off-track and avant-garde image of my fashion.” Quirkiness was certainly present in one of my favorite Yohji Homme ads — an old dog hiding behind a slender tree. Unbelievably, Yohji Homme lives up to Yamamoto’s statement; it IS off-track and avant-garde…
