Odeur 53 Comme des Garçons 1998

This is the atmosphere of that moment in the late 1990s, early 2000s, when everything was suddenly about space-futures. It didn't last long before culture descended into war, chaos, and fascism, but for a brief moment we imagined we were all heading somewhere on a spaceship together.

This is the fragrance of the clean, welcoming, bridge of that spaceship. Engage.

A wizard shrunk me, and I climbed up inside a computer running on Windows XP with the Bliss wallpaper (you know the one with the blue sky and green grass?). Tiny me is frolicking in those pixelated hills :D This is what this smells like. Synthetic grass, synthetic air, metallic insides of a computer. I gotta hand it to Comme des Garçons, they were doing scents like these already in the late 90s, before it was cool.

This is my ideal "skin scent".

It smells like so many minute things, it almost feels like the matrix is breaking down around me.

The associations I get are:
- hot laptop fan
- the backrooms but there's no roof so the air is fresh and there is a gentle breeze
- a UPS store (cardboard, tape, lots of paper, old carpet, dry)
- a dried up river bed
- static electricity
- sawing sheets of metal with an industrial saw

It's a fragrance I would wear truly for my own pleasure. I don't know if anyone else would even catch that I am wearing a fragrance. In that way, it almost feels like an energetic bubble that surrounds me and protects me from the wild world around me. It is clean but in an atypical way. A meeting of the processed material and the natural.

Very cool. Also I have never cared about this before, but the box and packaging are really stunning.

hovering somwhere between your grandma's freshly washed laundry and the flat iron she uses to steam her clothes, this fragrance is as nostalgic as it is liminal, existing only in the ghost of your childhood memories. so go ahead, hug your nana before you say goodbye for the last time. she loves you dearly.

Odeur 53 by Comme des Garcons is now almost celebrating its 25th birthday, so here’s a review! This fragrance was one of my very first niche scents back in the day, and it was quite a brutal entry into the niche world, which has accompanied me on my journey to this day and surely sparked a certain enthusiasm for peculiar, unusual fragrances.

On the packaging is the description - it is supposed to remind one of various situations. Of hot stones in summer, of a burning light bulb, of fresh laundry, of mountain air, of nail polish remover. So far, so strange, but what ultimately remains and does it really match the description?
To me, this fragrance feels very airy. It has a slightly medicinal and floral note, but primarily it is mineral and slightly alcoholic. It is extremely light and hardly noticeable, yet it develops further on the skin. There is no classic note pyramid, as it is very individual and evolves quite differently on different skin types, which makes it incredibly interesting.
This fragrance reminds me of many things; it evokes various associations and brings to mind completely different situations. It reminds me of an old plastic chair in a hospital that occasionally gets some sunlight, of an old but sterile room that hasn’t been entered in years, of a server room filled with computers and circuit boards, of an airplane that hasn’t flown in a long time and has that certain scent, of an art gallery with white walls and a cold floor, of a corner in a furniture store that is never visited by customers, of unused airports, of the classic "backrooms" places that feel familiar yet unknown, somehow friendly and comfortable but also slightly creepy and unsettling, abandoned for years, of a hotel where not a single room is occupied but the staff still do their jobs, of an unoccupied new apartment, of strange places that either have already fulfilled their purpose and are no longer needed, or seem completely pointless. It creates a certain comfort zone through its very simple nature, but at the same time, it feels unsettling and extremely odd because it does not smell like a perfume and immediately evokes associations that one typically does not have.

The striking 200ml bottle with a barcode, ingredients, and a small name on the front is a statement in itself. A design seems to not exist, and the entire fragrance feels as if it simply came into being one day, without anyone creatively developing it. The packaging is quite similar - gray, with no selling points or frills. A cardboard box that opens normally and contains the fragrance wrapped in plastic. Brutal, dry, blunt, but also absolutely authentic and fitting to the scent.

Personally, I love it; for me, it was not only the entry into the niche world but also remains an extremely special fragrance to this day. It is so unusual, so strange, it evokes such a calm yet simultaneously unrest in me, and I love the bottle design for inexplicable reasons as well. This fragrance is simply bold - it is hardly noticeable, acts like an absolute anti-perfume, and is exactly what most people are not looking for, and that’s exactly why I love it. In terms of price, this piece of perfume history is absolutely reasonable, although realistically, one will probably never use up the 200ml unless it is a signature scent, which it could very well be - especially if one is more sensitive to perfumes. It may not be the most special, most intense fragrance out there, but for those looking for something new and quirky, this will surely help.