Reviews of Odeur 71 (2000)
by Comme des Garçons

Here's my pretentious review when I was a n00b:

If Odeur 53 was a comfort scent of sitting in a garden of pixelized leaves and sunshine that's right next to a pool of soapy water that is filled with sentient robotic fish while being blown on the face by gusts of sweet refrigerated air --

...then Odeur 71 would be like standing alone, being the only human in a desolate robotic landscape with miles and miles of plastic-covered buildings that block out the sky. In the distance, you also see some robots burning pieces of rubber and other various synthetic material. They are there, but they make no sound. Everything is silent -- and the dust of the barren synthetic terrain are blown onto your face.


Here's my review today:

Metallic and woody. Okay, but boring. Pass!

I might be a biased reviewer, since majority of my scents are spicy/woody oriental and really classic (just to avoid saying old-fashioned). So this is the odd one out which I bought for I was curious and felt mischievous... It is very flat on my skin, and after couple of preliminary office +ink +dirty car garage notes settles quickly into very woody something, surprisingly quite alike my other perfumes. I own it for two months and I still cannot decide whether I like it or not. Good to wear for work though, as it stays close to the skin and is hardly sexy.
Nice try, but I think it's more a marketing masterpiece than anything else. Much Ado About Nothing.

Quite abstract and very challenging. It took me a long while to train my nose to smell the accords presented in Odeur 71 but I still am not sure of them. I sort of get the metal and office-aroma notes. I don’t find anything that smells like dust on a hot light bulb, or photocopier toner (both those odors are too sharp for anything I smell in this fragrance). No incense, but lots of artificially smelling wood in the base. I also get that accord that PM describes so well – grilled sausage (pork) with shampoo (unscented) gravy. I can wear Odeur 71 and even understand it a little, but I don’t think I will ever be able to like it very much. It’s not the kind of scent that will grow on me.

i tasted it recentrly and i have to say initially the perfume reminds me a bit the other Odeur, like dark and stony and dusty, but then changed radicly in an must more cleaner and attractive fragance made of thounsands of different notes but smeled just two:
flowery lemon plus clean fresh air.
Unfot. the smell vanish in seconds, doesn´t matter where you spray it :(
so, I´m really sorry but neutral one.

Amusing and quite wearable when used occasionally and reasonably. Interestingly, some of the marketing nonsense seems to be true: I do get the photocopier, but also sweat and stale butter. That's the fun thing about 71 - you can find almost anything there, depending on the mood, time and place. The not so fun thing is that it tends to be obtrusive and pretentious, like many other CdG creations. Best suited for young party-goers.

I like it better than 53, probably because it has more natural notes and is less "clean" and "cool" and "fresh", although it is that too. Faint and artificial and nondescript but if I inhale deeply a get a whiff of something intriguing. Perhaps a hint of woods and leaves and the slightest touch of incense? A little sharper than 53.

The Baron de Charlus once told me: 'Comme des Garcons Odeur 71? A merely passable, undistinguished modern scent, reflecting ozone and ordinariness. A somewhat boring and watery work, wholly generic, in spite of its eccentric pretensions and strange list of ingredients: dust on light bulb, typewriter ribbon, dewdrop on nose, bleach on fingernail or whatever.'