Comme Des Garcons Rouge Review – 2020

Colour references in perfume names are so ubiquitous that I’m sure we pay less attention to them than to the wallpaper we never notice in that room we’ve been meaning to redecorate since the last century. From hundreds of ‘blancs’ to countless ‘noirs’, with every shade of purple, blue and pink in between, they’ve been used as a dubious shorthand to try to communicate the effect a fragrance might have on its wearer. But sometimes, the device is more than a facile marketing gimmick. Every now and then, the hue fits — as in the case of the new Comme Des Garcons Rouge.

CdG have considerable form here. For one thing, they’ve visited this colour before. Their Red series from 2001 is still considered one of their finest achievements, with many bemoaning the discontinuation of some of the scents from the range. In 1995 they gave us the beautiful – but not strictly name-accurate – cinnamon + lily combo of White. 2013 saw the release of Black, with its mix of pepper, leather and liquorice. And in the same year we had their Blue series, although its chromatic conceit was perhaps less convincing than it could have been. But Rouge sees the brand at its sparky, edgy best.

One way to create a believably ‘red’ scent would have been to assemble as many materials as possible that would fit the colour description. That’s certainly an approach that’s yielded tremendous results in the past, with Bertrand Duchaufour’s white-on-white-on-white essay for Penhaligon’s Amaranthine the first example that comes to mind right now. But that’s not how Comme Des Garcons have approached this particular project.

As far as its structure goes, Rouge is a resinous wood scent, heavy on incense in the base and on the more bark-like aspects of pepper and geranium leaf in the top and heart. In other words, not especially crimson. But running through this framework is a note that provided me with one of the most genuine and enjoyable olfactory surprises of the year: beetroot! With its earthy, rooty, muddy, semi-sweet, bitter and unashamedly red personality, it bleeds into all the other elements in the composition, staining them with the sort of quirky uniqueness that could have come only from Comme.

Interestingly, the brand attempted a similar ‘root vegetable trick’ with their Clash Radish Vetiver from 2019. But whereas that release rarely rose above the level of an intriguing idea, Rouge is an entirely full-blooded piece of work, coherent from start to finish, gleaming like a bizarre, fleshy ruby. It’s easily the best thing we’ve had from them since 2016’s Blackpepper (oh look, yet another colour!) conjuring all manner of unusual images and olfacto-visual associations, my personal favourite being the thought of Sister Ruth losing her mind in the Himalayas while tucking into a bowl of steaming barszcz. Precisely the sort of delicious weirdness that only perfume can provide.

Persolaise

[Comme Des Garcons Rouge review based on a sample of eau de parfum provided by the brand in 2020.]

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