parfums*PARFUMS Luxe: Champaca (2007)
by Comme des Garçons

A serious, grand white floral. Handsome, with considerable gravity. It's jasmine-heavy on me, with the interesting juxtaposition of a soft, citrus backdrop rubbing against tart pepper. Evolves steadily and impressively, through a slowly softening floral spectrum. Has the slightest whiff of pencil shavings at its base. Smells costly. It *is* costly.

Floral and rich… The combination of tuberose and the champaca flower is stellar. With the opening, the full and rich tuberose and champaca florals are nimbused by a delicate angelica and pepper, creating an uncommonly special white floral accord. As often happens, I get only a hint of the pepper in the opening. Unfortunately the nature of the angelica is ephemeral and its delicate aura has evaporated too soon, leaving a white floral that is still beautiful but a lesser scent than what it was in the opening. The relative strength of the champaca grows in comparison with the tuberose, so I guess I’m not as much a fan of champaca as I am of tuberose. But the accord is beautifully refined. The white florals are somewhat clean – the indoles are there, but they’ve been pretty much tamed. The base is an understated iris / white musk united with the remaining white florals: very pleasant. In spite of my disappointment at the direction the fragrance traveled since its opening, I must say that this tuberose / champaca fragrance deserves consideration along with the great tuberose scents. More delicate than Fracas (of course) and less indolic than Carnal Flower, LUXE Champaca is pretty much gorgeous and has enough originality in its persona that it just might make it as a tuberose holy grail. I myself consider it an also-ran and I remain true to Fracas both for the attractiveness of Fracas’ accords and for its longevity. But LUXE Champaca does present a different point of view that may very well be strongly appealing to another tuberose lover.

Eh, it's alright. Smells like an indolic rose, if that's a champaca flower it's not too exotic. A light musky powdery drydown. I find this a very feminine and typical white flower-esque fragrance.

Do you ever find yourself taking a LONG time to get around to certain samples you have? I mean, you're excited about trying it; you've heard many comments on BN about it, etc - but something keeps you from actually breaking open the samples and trying at already! This happened to me with Champaca by Comme des Garcons.

I received the sample a while ago (along with the Luxe Series, Patchouli). A Basenoter told me they sampled the Champaca in Paris and found it really feminine. This didn't stop me since I already own Guerilla 1 by Comme des Garcons which prominently features champaca among it's other odd notes (pear, saffron) and uses it to odd effect (it smells like the inside of a butcher shop). But Champaca does not have one odd bone in it's $265 (for less than 1 oz) body. As I found out, Champaca is pretty great:

The top notes are indolic white flower of the A La Nuit, Carnal Flower variety. I get tuberose and it's bright white. Some angelica tempers it but overall the white floral is enhanced mostly by the pepper (the notes list white pepper and bird pepper [?]) The pepper is perfectly blended with the florals. Let me say that again: The pepper is perfectly blended with the florals. I sniffed my hand at least 15 times to get the floral/pepper effect. As I said before, the florals are bright - so the combo with the pepper gives it an uplifting pungent effect. It also 'butches' up the florals a little.

As it progresses it gets creamier. I can't say I'm a fan of creamy florals, but coming off of the bright peppery top notes, the creamy floral is welcomed. Of course, this is when the star of the show, the champaca flower, truly shines. It's extremely strong without being 'meaty' like Guerilla 1. For a few seconds it got a little 'blue cheese' indoles, but then that part faded and it went back to its creamy, floral, complex self.

This scent smells expensive. Hard to convey in words, but the overall effect of something wild and something natural (ironic, no?) left me with a feeling that how I smelled was something very rare. Another blogger mentioned that this scent would fit in perfectly in the Armani Prive line and I agree.

The white musk drydown was not my favorite, but the hints of champaca notes that stayed all the way to the base notes made it special. I could swear there's iris in the dry down but it doesn't seem as if iris is an official note.

The bottle, oddly, looks like an Atari joystick. Ignore this, if you're a white floral lover, and head straight for the juice!

My first thought when I smelled CdG's Luxe Champaca was “Ooh, wow! This is beautiful!” And it is. It smells exactly like a lush, juicy, tropical white flower and is miles away from CdG’s usual minimalist, understated style. Simply put, Luxe Champaca is a very pretty, girly strong floral perfume. Since I’ve never smelled a champaca flower before, I am going to say that it smells predominantly of tuberose (and somehow jasmine, although that is not listed in the notes). I can also detect slight cardamom and pepper notes peeking in. However, Luxe Champaca is Miss Tuberose’s domain and she seems pretty determined to keep everyone else firmly in the background!

Caveat: I liked smelling Luxe Champaca on my wrist for testing/review purposes but given its strength and sillage, I don't think I would ever personally want to wear this, nor would I buy it. This is one perfume that would definitely wear me!

Here are the notes, courtesy of The Perfume Court: white pepper, angelica, cardamom, champaca, bird pepper, tuberose, white musk and iris wood.

Decadent and lush indeed! Massive amounts of tuberose here, so opponents of white florals had best beware.

To quote the inimitable Vibert, "while wearing Luxe Champaca I feel a bit like a debauched and aging drag queen who's trying just a bit too hard to channel Lauren Bacall." LOLOLOL -- I couldn't have said it better myself!

All that aside, suffice it to say that this one is a) far too feminine for me for everyday wear and b) too expensive for everyday wear, to boot. (But I'm sure going to enjoy the hell out of my sample!)