Reviews of Odeur 71 (2000)
by Comme des Garçons

Different. Very, very different. In a few words without going pretentious artsy: a wet woody metallic. However, if you read the crazy fragrance notes list, you can almost imagine them from this scent. They are not discernible immediately but they can be found. "Dust on a lightbulb" is my faavorite "note" in the wacky bunch. A definite try before you buy both historically and odorifically.

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.

Bottle-worthy? Well, this is something I wouldn't want to smell like -- so I'd say no. It gives me a headache when overapplied.

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.

This is an "outsider" perfume. Lonely, melancholy, nostalgic, cynical and self-searching. Wear it for your own enjoyment and not for others. The notes don't evolve over time, but depending on your state of mind evoke bizarre unconcious associations. A perfume homage to the music of Ligeti, Stockhausen, Xenakis... Fantastic!!!

Well, it *is* different, we can give it that. My question always about Comme des Garcons is, if I didn't know what was going on here would my opinion of it change? There is something detatched and oddly lonely about this. It's like walking in an industrial landscape or a sterile corporate megaplex in the middle of nowhere, picking up some of the grass coming from the riding lawnmower that is making the only sound in the pristinely vacant scene.

Odeur 71 is the sweetness we all smell when we smell things we feel silly about smelling. The inside of a glossy brochure, the funny sweet smell of duct tape, the smell of a hot computer or TV and their warm plastic and whirring inner parts. This is funny... I was thinking pen ink and looked up to see, and sure enough, it was in the listed ingredients! If I could try to "get in there" and figure out what natural ingredients are creating this effect, I'd assume something grassy, something rubbery, something lightly smokey (especially in the opening moments), something like light clean soil. But the end result really is "office" or "vacant modern space", totally gray, clean, like the standard plastics used to cover office equipment, and I don't even want to aesthetically strip it of its vision by trying to figure that out.

A lot of things that aren't typically fragrant have a smell, and we know those smells are there, and Comme des Garcons has bottled many of them into a fascinating fragrance that seems more appropriate for study than for wear. Of course that's up to the individual as it is certainly far less repellent than many of the more standard fragrance offerings available today from large designer houses in department stores. Thumbs up for uniqueness and artistic integrity.

First tried this frag on march 07, the 15ml's one. The lady on the counter didnt want to spray it, so I only sniff the sprayhead. I dont like it because the only things I can detect was only burnt rubber. Yesterday I went to mall near to my house n found a small perfume shop, I was very supprised that they have Odeur 71 200 ml since this perfume is very hard-to-find in my country, I've got a one full spray in my arm. The opening's still a burnt rubber but after 5 minutes it transformed into something transparent-fresh-woody fragrance, a really well blended one. My wife also like it very much. My body chemistry never compromise with any fresh kind of frag, but this one is the first fresh frag that I can use. I also found that this is very complex, you can almost find anything inside.

GREAT ! No hesitation if you want to smell "different " : this is definitely an anti perfume and you won't smell like if you had used an eau de toilette... You will smell (it is very difficult to describe 'cose this frag is very abstract) "fresh" and "clean" but also... dusty ! I didn't like it at all when I first sprayed it (smells too much like a burnt tire ; luckily this frag goes away pretty fast) but 1 hour after, when it has warmed and developped... !

i don't think i have washed anything off so quickly before. the positive noteis that it has good staying power... i can't get the scent off my wrist. the negative is theat imo it smells like old burned plastic.

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.

This one I got by requesting it to a friend that traveled to Paris this Christmas...(plus another CDG scent as a gift...) I found it at first very similar to Odeur 53, but as it developed on my skin I found out that all they have in common is that they are both synthetics, but then the notes change quite a bit. I think that in the sampling process CDG uses, the identity of the sample, all it's personality, is lost (i.e. I have to try VERY HARD to conjure up dust on a lightbulb while smelling this one, photocopier is much easier though..) but on the other hand this is a very sexy perfume in a kinky sort of way...This is the olfactory equivalent of a sex toy...it only requires a little imagination to turn it from something inanimated and lifeless into an accessory to pleasure.

Now I know what they mean when they call it an Anti-perfume, a very bold and daring blend...unplaceble and yet oddly familiar, it's deffinately a departure from the scent counter at your local department store...when I first sprayed it on...I really didnt like it...I was overwhelmed with the smell of ozone and somehting that smelled a bit like vacuum bands...but as it dried down, a sort of botanical scent began to creep through...not floral, but deffinately green...very refreshing...the ozone is still present, but much more subdued, and fresh smelling...there's a slight unplaceable sweetness mixed with a tinge of saltyness which seems to get a bit more prevalent as time goes by......you can deffinately smell a bit of "copy machine" but it comes through a just a whisp of something mysterious rather than easily identifiable as a copy machine.. as the day progresses, you'll pick up on different things...the lettuce juice really comes through about an hour or so after spraying it...very fresh smelling, but not so much like a fresh smelling cologne...more like fresh in the sense of a produce market early in the morning, or a rainforest after a storm...upon smelling this scent on you...nobody will say you stink...but I doubt they'll ask you what cologne you are wearing...perhaps they'll just think you smell like this naturally...it smells good, but deffinately not like your typical cologne (see what I mean??? Anti-perfume)...I'd deffinately recommend this for the avant guarde lover of non-traditional scents...

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.'

Interesting!! At first, I was quite hesitant to try this one out, given its eclectic notes (and a bad impression of CdG2). However, despite the funky unconventional notes, this one is a pleasant, warm, woody scent that is full of complexity and character. It does resemble that ozone smell one smells as the rain first hits the ground; how did they figure that out? :-) Highly recommended among the experimental scents out there.

Pretty much as advertised, though I was surprised by how pleasant and non-artifical it actually smelled. At first it had an ephermeral piney note which gave way to a strong burnt rubber smell, developing into a pleasant ozone, sweet rubber and beef jerkey smell. Fortunately the beef jerkey was short lived, as the fragrance wore on it became a little less airy and more 'solid'with a dry citrus and smoke quality, then suddenly switching to an almost floral lemon water - complicated and "chaotic" as one reviewer put it - but very pleasant indeed.

"Antiperfume" legend (burnt dust on bulb etc.) doesn't have any effect on me so I feel it as fresh air-floral-woody fragrance with just a bit of synthetics to it. Small garden of cultivated flowers. High temps can easily beat some polymeric plastic and ozone notes out of it. Lasts a very good time. Definitely, it has no structure and develops chaotically on skin. But I like it!

When I recently started collecting fragrances, I read a good deal of reviews on Basenotes as well as elsewhere online. At one point, I read a lady's review on UseNet which stated that she wanted to rip her boyfriend's clothes off whenever he wore Odeur 71. Needless to say, my interest was immediately sparked. When I found the list of very unusual fragrance notes, I was fascinated and extremely curious. I even told some of the fellows at work and we began humourously referring to the fragrance as "Dust on a Hot Lightbulb."
I made an substantial investment/gamble and ordered a bottle of Odeur 71 online. It does indeed smell unlike most fragrances, and I have to spray on a bit more than usual because it's a bit faint and tends to disappear quickly on my skin. The responses from others have ranged from mediocre to favourable, and nobody has said that they disliked it. When I visited my parents, my mum said it smelled like sewing machine oil (and then admitted that she actually LIKED the smell of sewing machine oil). Personally, when I smell it on me, I am reminded of the times I spent in libraries and bookstores when I was a young child. Odeur 71 has the same musty yet pleasant atmosphere.
It doesn't seem like an incredibly romantic fragrance; it's more of an odd, industrial scent. When I've worn it on dates, the ladies have said that it wasn't bad, but they weren't racing to rip my clothes off either. Overall, I'm glad that I added this unusual fragance to my arsenal, and I give it a "thumbs-up" for the high-quality, novel approach to create a strangely "modern" and "urban" fragrance.