Rewrite
To mark Comme des Garçons Parfums’ new release with Monocle, the Dover Street Market co-founder tells the story behind ten of the brand’s rule-breaking scents
Some 30 years ago, a chance meeting in Tokyo between perfumer Christian Astuguevieille and Rei Kawakubo sparked the beginning of Comme des Garçons Parfums: a fantastical world of ‘anti-fragrances’ as much about innovation, inspiration, and imagination as the final scent. In Comme’s familial, embracing ethos, 17 years later, Adrian Joffe – President of Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons – opened their unique olfactory world to friends of the house through an ongoing series of fittingly unconventional collaborations. “Rei is not only a fashion designer – she designs the company,” he reflects. “And I think that’s a freedom that everybody else should have: creatives expressing their vision in different mediums.”
From their first collaboration – Scent One: Hinoki with Monocle – to their perfumes with Artek, the Serpentine Gallery, and Stephen Jones, the CDG Parfums collaborations redefine how we perceive and conceive of scent: translating the ideology of a magazine, a brand, a hat into not only a perfume, but also its bottle and packaging. “The first question I ask people when they approach us is, ‘Are you here to make money?,’” explains Joffe, “Because we are not in that business. We are in it for the process and the fun of creating something with our friends.”
These perfumes are never made at arm’s length: they are built on an existing friendship and unfold as a veritable merging of visions. If the creative partner has full control over the bottle and packaging, the final scent must be signed off on by Astuguevieille to ensure it still speaks the Comme language. “There has to be a relationship with us,” says Joffe, “Every single person who comes to us is a friend of ours and they have to get along with Christian.” The resulting fragrance is a tangible expression of long-standing friendship pinned on a specific moment in time.
CdG Parfums recently released their fifth collaborative fragrance with Monocle, Scent Five: Syros – a natural progression in the brand’s shared sensorial journey with Comme. Their most Mediterranean-inspired scent yet, crafted by perfumer Antoine Maisondieu, Syros lingers in high summer: salt-heavy air, herbs blistering in the heat, earth cracked and dry under the sun.
To mark the release of Syros, Joffe tells us in his own words how ten of his favourite collaborations came to be.
“I don’t know whether I thought of it first or whether Tyler Brûlé came to me. He was already wearing our perfume – loved it – and said, ’Would you do ours?’ I’d never seen anyone do a magazine perfume before. It felt unexpected. Wrong-footed, in the best way. The first one was Scent One: Hinoki (2008) inspired by the smell of a Japanese bath – very Monocle, very Tyler. Clean, elegant, considered. Tyler’s always had that love of Japan. We’ve done five now. Syros is our latest. Each one has its own identity, but they all feel like Monocle.“
“Can you believe that Stephen first met Rei some 30 years ago in Anchorage, Alaska out of all places! And ever since, Stephen has been part of the Comme family – he designs hats for Comme and we have his own creations at Dover Street Market. He is an icon – I love him. The first fragrance we did together [in 2008] was named after him and it was quite unusual. It felt like designing a scent for a hat. Then we did a second one in 2014, Wisteria Hysteria. Both were packaged in miniature hat boxes and lined milliner’s veiling. I just love working with Stephen on anything.“
“We’d never done a perfume with a furniture company before, but Artek just made sense. I already knew Ville Kokkonen – he was their creative director and a lovely guy – and we used to use their vintage stools in Rose Bakery at Dover Street Market London. He said, ‘You’ve got to do a perfume with me,’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ He wanted it to smell like birch trees – the kind they slap each other with in Finnish saunas. The perfume, Standard, came out in 2009. It turned out to be one of my favourites, actually. A beautiful bottle too – we launched it at the Artek shop.“
“We love Jun [Takahashi], of course. He’s part of the family. There were two perfumes we did with him, released at the same time in 2010 – Holygrace and Holygrapie. He liked the idea of it being like a mini story, a little family. The concepts came from these amazing dolls he makes named Grace and her child Grapie – they’re so weird and wonderful. The perfumes have both been discontinued now, but people really hunt them down. The bottles go for crazy prices online. I think sometimes people buy them just for the bottles.“
“Hussein came to us and said, ’I want to do a perfume that’s about my journey: from growing up in Turkish Cyprus, travelling across Europe, and ending up in London.’ He wanted to capture all the smells along the way. It started with things from Turkey: lemon, mastic, incense, musk, cedarwood … to the urban scents of London. We don’t really do top, middle, heart notes – Airborne, his perfume from 2011, was more like windows opening along the way of this long journey. It was a very interesting one.“
“2014 was the year he was everywhere. Happy had just come out, he was on The Voice – Pharrell was probably the most famous person in America. But he didn’t want to do some throwaway celebrity fragrance – he really wanted it to be an artistic project. He worked closely with Christian on the scent and KAWS did the bottle. There was a lot of excitement, and it launched with this big moment at the Sephora conference in Las Vegas – 5,000 people, just huge. He put so much into it. He’s very serious when he decides to do something.“
“That one came about through Hans Ulrich Obrist, also from 2014. We worked with Tracey Emin – she designed the bottle and the box. I met her for the first time at the launch and we all went to dinner after. It was a great night – Julia Peyton-Jones was there, Joan Collins was opposite Tracey, it was a whole scene. Tracey was amazing – feisty, but brilliant. And I have a personal memory from that night too. I bumped into this woman and said, ’I know you,’ and it turned out to be my cousin Ruth McKenzie. We hadn’t seen each other in 40 years. So, I always have a soft spot for that one.“
“ERL Sunscreen is lovely. I think we worked with Eli on it for a good two years until it was released in 2021. It’s got that very distinct feeling of California – sun and skin and salt. Very fresh, very Venice Beach. I think what I love about working with Eli is that it’s not overly complicated – there’s a clarity to his vision.“
“Daphne and I were friends, and she said, ’Oh my god, I love your perfume.’ Anyone we work with has to love our perfume the way we do it. But Daphne actually has a very special personal anecdote: she’s the only one Christian ever took in to meet the nose. He was so impressed with her vision of perfume and her knowledge of the whole world of it. They got on really well. It was released in 2009 but she orders 2,000 bottles of Daphne every couple of years and then buys like 1,800 of them for herself.“
“With Mirror (2021) it was all about the concept. Brian [Donnelly] gave us the idea, and we worked from there – just like with Pharrell. Brian’s got such a visual mind, and the process with him was very special. Christian and him never actually met, it was all by correspondence. Brian would give him words, Christian would be inspired and then he’d send by mail eight or so different samples. We created the fragrance, and he brought the bottle to life in his own way. It was very KAWS – it has his iconic Companion cartoon. Graphic, pop, playful, but also considered.“
Scent Five: Syros with Monocle is available to shop at Dover Street Market.
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To mark Comme des Garçons Parfums’ new release with Monocle, the Dover Street Market co-founder tells the story behind ten of the brand’s rule-breaking scents
Some 30 years ago, a chance meeting in Tokyo between perfumer Christian Astuguevieille and Rei Kawakubo sparked the beginning of Comme des Garçons Parfums: a fantastical world of ‘anti-fragrances’ as much about innovation, inspiration, and imagination as the final scent. In Comme’s familial, embracing ethos, 17 years later, Adrian Joffe – President of Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons – opened their unique olfactory world to friends of the house through an ongoing series of fittingly unconventional collaborations. “Rei is not only a fashion designer – she designs the company,” he reflects. “And I think that’s a freedom that everybody else should have: creatives expressing their vision in different mediums.”
From their first collaboration – Scent One: Hinoki with Monocle – to their perfumes with Artek, the Serpentine Gallery, and Stephen Jones, the CDG Parfums collaborations redefine how we perceive and conceive of scent: translating the ideology of a magazine, a brand, a hat into not only a perfume, but also its bottle and packaging. “The first question I ask people when they approach us is, ‘Are you here to make money?,’” explains Joffe, “Because we are not in that business. We are in it for the process and the fun of creating something with our friends.”
These perfumes are never made at arm’s length: they are built on an existing friendship and unfold as a veritable merging of visions. If the creative partner has full control over the bottle and packaging, the final scent must be signed off on by Astuguevieille to ensure it still speaks the Comme language. “There has to be a relationship with us,” says Joffe, “Every single person who comes to us is a friend of ours and they have to get along with Christian.” The resulting fragrance is a tangible expression of long-standing friendship pinned on a specific moment in time.
CdG Parfums recently released their fifth collaborative fragrance with Monocle, Scent Five: Syros – a natural progression in the brand’s shared sensorial journey with Comme. Their most Mediterranean-inspired scent yet, crafted by perfumer Antoine Maisondieu, Syros lingers in high summer: salt-heavy air, herbs blistering in the heat, earth cracked and dry under the sun.
To mark the release of Syros, Joffe tells us in his own words how ten of his favourite collaborations came to be.
“I don’t know whether I thought of it first or whether Tyler Brûlé came to me. He was already wearing our perfume – loved it – and said, ’Would you do ours?’ I’d never seen anyone do a magazine perfume before. It felt unexpected. Wrong-footed, in the best way. The first one was Scent One: Hinoki (2008) inspired by the smell of a Japanese bath – very Monocle, very Tyler. Clean, elegant, considered. Tyler’s always had that love of Japan. We’ve done five now. Syros is our latest. Each one has its own identity, but they all feel like Monocle.“
“Can you believe that Stephen first met Rei some 30 years ago in Anchorage, Alaska out of all places! And ever since, Stephen has been part of the Comme family – he designs hats for Comme and we have his own creations at Dover Street Market. He is an icon – I love him. The first fragrance we did together [in 2008] was named after him and it was quite unusual. It felt like designing a scent for a hat. Then we did a second one in 2014, Wisteria Hysteria. Both were packaged in miniature hat boxes and lined milliner’s veiling. I just love working with Stephen on anything.“
“We’d never done a perfume with a furniture company before, but Artek just made sense. I already knew Ville Kokkonen – he was their creative director and a lovely guy – and we used to use their vintage stools in Rose Bakery at Dover Street Market London. He said, ‘You’ve got to do a perfume with me,’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ He wanted it to smell like birch trees – the kind they slap each other with in Finnish saunas. The perfume, Standard, came out in 2009. It turned out to be one of my favourites, actually. A beautiful bottle too – we launched it at the Artek shop.“
“We love Jun [Takahashi], of course. He’s part of the family. There were two perfumes we did with him, released at the same time in 2010 – Holygrace and Holygrapie. He liked the idea of it being like a mini story, a little family. The concepts came from these amazing dolls he makes named Grace and her child Grapie – they’re so weird and wonderful. The perfumes have both been discontinued now, but people really hunt them down. The bottles go for crazy prices online. I think sometimes people buy them just for the bottles.“
“Hussein came to us and said, ’I want to do a perfume that’s about my journey: from growing up in Turkish Cyprus, travelling across Europe, and ending up in London.’ He wanted to capture all the smells along the way. It started with things from Turkey: lemon, mastic, incense, musk, cedarwood … to the urban scents of London. We don’t really do top, middle, heart notes – Airborne, his perfume from 2011, was more like windows opening along the way of this long journey. It was a very interesting one.“
“2014 was the year he was everywhere. Happy had just come out, he was on The Voice – Pharrell was probably the most famous person in America. But he didn’t want to do some throwaway celebrity fragrance – he really wanted it to be an artistic project. He worked closely with Christian on the scent and KAWS did the bottle. There was a lot of excitement, and it launched with this big moment at the Sephora conference in Las Vegas – 5,000 people, just huge. He put so much into it. He’s very serious when he decides to do something.“
“That one came about through Hans Ulrich Obrist, also from 2014. We worked with Tracey Emin – she designed the bottle and the box. I met her for the first time at the launch and we all went to dinner after. It was a great night – Julia Peyton-Jones was there, Joan Collins was opposite Tracey, it was a whole scene. Tracey was amazing – feisty, but brilliant. And I have a personal memory from that night too. I bumped into this woman and said, ’I know you,’ and it turned out to be my cousin Ruth McKenzie. We hadn’t seen each other in 40 years. So, I always have a soft spot for that one.“
“ERL Sunscreen is lovely. I think we worked with Eli on it for a good two years until it was released in 2021. It’s got that very distinct feeling of California – sun and skin and salt. Very fresh, very Venice Beach. I think what I love about working with Eli is that it’s not overly complicated – there’s a clarity to his vision.“
“Daphne and I were friends, and she said, ’Oh my god, I love your perfume.’ Anyone we work with has to love our perfume the way we do it. But Daphne actually has a very special personal anecdote: she’s the only one Christian ever took in to meet the nose. He was so impressed with her vision of perfume and her knowledge of the whole world of it. They got on really well. It was released in 2009 but she orders 2,000 bottles of Daphne every couple of years and then buys like 1,800 of them for herself.“
“With Mirror (2021) it was all about the concept. Brian [Donnelly] gave us the idea, and we worked from there – just like with Pharrell. Brian’s got such a visual mind, and the process with him was very special. Christian and him never actually met, it was all by correspondence. Brian would give him words, Christian would be inspired and then he’d send by mail eight or so different samples. We created the fragrance, and he brought the bottle to life in his own way. It was very KAWS – it has his iconic Companion cartoon. Graphic, pop, playful, but also considered.“
Scent Five: Syros with Monocle is available to shop at Dover Street Market.
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