Marseille Comme des Garçons 2021

If you've ever smelled Savon de Marseille you'll know right away, that this is it!
To me this smell is about herbs, orangeb blossom, lavender, verbena, fresh citrus peels, green olives and cypresses. And, the new fragrance captures this Mediterranian aromatic coctail spot on. Plus, they enriched it with neroli, which are very natural-smelling and quite bright here.
I love that they made this fragrance so, that it smells like handcrafted soap (they probably used some aldehydes to help recreate the soapness in the composition). However, at the same time my nose somehow knows that this fragrance belongs to Comme des Garcons - there is definately the brand’s DNA in it.
Marseille perfume is in itself rich enough, yet it is also smooth and harmoniously done.

I was expecting this to be an edgier CDG version of Paper Soap by J-Scent, but found this to be too neroli-centric in the opening to be an actual soap scent. I find it difficult to appreciate neroli unless it's blended and softened by other notes. This perfume is an example of the type of pure neroli note that I don't particularly enjoy, unfortunately.

This is not plain white Dove soap. This is creamy handmade olive oil soap with little pieces of herbs in it, all wrapped up in brown paper. Marseille smells like foaming up a bar of handmade soap and washing your hands and then after drying your hands with a freshly washed towel, you bring them to your face and inhale deeply.

Honestly this scent is spot on and somehow it also works as a perfume. It is fresh and clean and has a foamy texture to it. You can’t really over-spray as it consistently stays soft and unobtrusive. However, it is not weak and easily lasts a good 6 hours on skin, even longer on clothes.

What surprised me the most was how well this performed in the heat. Typically, any perfume I wear in our hot humid weather dissipates within an hour. Marseille just kept going. I could smell it hours later as I moved around, even after retreating in doors. I could even still smell traces of it in the crook of my elbow after I had showered (using Dove soap).

If you are looking for a naturally clean, foamy, feel good scent for summer, I highly recommend this one. Completely unisex, perfect for the office, or really whenever you want to smell fresh yet familiar.

This perfume is pure soap, beigeish white, sudsy, artisanal. Quality in an old-fashioned way. Something my Parisian grandmother would have at home, brought back from a summer spent in the South.

To me this perfume is very comforting, soft, kind, and totally sexless. That's probably because it makes me feel like a big, happy, clean baby laughing happily, and simultaneously like the gentle grandmother bathing him. It is full of the "milk of human kindness".

To those who say you would smell the same rubbing Marseille soap on you: I do see that. But are you going to do that? Perfume is really nice as a format for scent, come on now.

Plus, the longevity is pretty incredible! for a very clean scent, I can smell it all day with good projection and not too many changes.

Will keep borrowing it from my flatmate here and there, but probably not buy a bottle of it.

I love wearing this on a hot day, or when I am pretending it should be a hot day. It smells like Marseille soap (you know when you know) but I also smell sand/beach. So it is a clean smell, but the 'sand' gives it depth and takes you to... well maybe to Marseille (the city). There is a hidden edginess to this fragrance.
It also evokes the feeling of a laundrette, where they use detergent different from your own.
If you can't decide if you want to go to the beach or to the forest, do as I do: spray one arm with Monocle Scent One: Hinoki and the other with Marseille and you can switch between the two instantaneously. Magic!