Odeur 53 by Comme des Garcons

Odeur 53 once promised (I read on the metal packaging I keep in its box) the scent of fresh oxygen, nail polish, cellulose, metal, pure mountain air, sand dunes, fire, electricity, clothes drying in the breeze, burnt rubber, the mineral intensity of coal, and burning stones. Years ago I also heard it described as smelling like a baby’s breath. Well. Everything at the start is false, to a certain extent. It can arguably smell like all that it promises, but it is a combination of those scents that you never perceive individually. It is strangely warm, ozonic and mineral peat. However, the last point is very true: from the mid-stage onwards, and especially as it dries, Odeur 53 smells of baby saliva. Not of a baby perfumed with typical eau de cologne, nor even of talcum powder… but of pure baby breath or fresh saliva from a healthy person. Just as it sounds. The first phase is extremely strange; have you ever smelled poppers? Well, Odeur 53 at first is like a more volatile, refined popper… it gives the impression that if you were to spill the liquid, it would evaporate instantly, as happens with nail polish remover or that drug. It feels somewhat repulsive, and I admit addictive. It makes you feel sick, yet you keep smelling your wrist. It is a disgust that amuses you. As I said, the interesting part happens twenty minutes after application, because it transforms into a Wooded Musky Floral perfume with a capital letter, yet with a minimalist intention, neither feminine nor masculine, creamy with a dirty edge, and at the same time very synthetic and artificial. I do not mean that generic artificial smell of modern perfumes. No, it is an intentional artificiality, laboratory-made, aseptic. From here on, associations begin; you smell beach sand, then it tries to form something resembling mounds of rare musky clay, I am not even sure if it is sawdust or clay, I even smell burnt earth, sun-warmed pebbles, and a vague idea of water that is difficult to define. This perfume smells like all these bizarre concepts. But above all of them stands either the smell of baby breath or the smell of human skin just before a sexual encounter. Can one capture in a perfume the electricity between two clean people who have not yet fully sweated, the electricity between two people who desire each other? Well, I feel it in Odeur 53. Something very strange, that duality between the artificial and synthetic nature of the opening (in terms of scent and concepts) and the carnal, very subtle, musky and even innocent dry-down, which smells exactly like a child’s saliva, which never smells bad, up to the smell of a passionate kiss, with that sour, metallic and semi-sweet note of saliva. This is a very strange perfume. And when I say strange, I mean extremely so. Because when you wear it, you go from thinking you are being pulled the leg to instantly changing your mind, and so on and on. When you wear it, you find yourself wrapped between absolute disgust and the sensation that what initially seemed a repugnant industrial compound has become a perfume with woody, floral and musky nuances under the intimate presentation of eau de cologne with a creamy touch… and it is very disconcerting. Long lasting with a moderate, intimate sillage. Furthermore, I believe that due to the number of abstract sensations it contains, Odeur 53 would not be suitable as a bomb that can be smelled from three metres away. It is a perfume to be detected very close. There are very sexual perfumes, such as certain orientals, however, no matter how good their intention is, in most cases they face reality, and it is that if the person wearing them is not attractive to you, they may wear pure civet essence mixed with honey and sandalwood and it will give you exactly the same result. In the end, if there is chemistry between two people, it does not matter if they wear Gaultier 2 or Sport Man, because you will like it equally. With Odeur 53 I make an exception. I believe that without mannerisms or ornaments, beneath the strangeness of what it evokes lies a very, very sexual perfume. Strangely sexual.