Daphne by Daphne Guinness, 2009

A wild romp - so retro, so '60's, so fun, an explosion of notes. In spite of it's big overstuffed grocery cart of notes, the barely contained cornucopia of vivid olfactoriness, it manages to hang together.... actually, it's got that '60's mentality of letting it all hang out. No secrets here, just lots of living, expressing, and emoting. It's great! This strikes me as a fragrance you need to just go with, and then you get along with it just fine. You can trust it like the wild roommate you had in college - lots of fun, a friend. It's an attitude fragrance, and if you're going to get all analytical about it, it's probably not for you - this is not a cerebral fragrance. That being said, what with it's deserved reputation for hanging in there and partying until the next day, this fragrance can stay too strong, too insistent in the drydown, when you're ready to quit partying. With such a powerful drydown, you have to like the note it becomes at that point, which is a jasmine/tuberose woody amber, and be willing to go with it. The solution is a subtle touch with the application. I slathered indiscriminantly with my sample, and it was a force to be reckoned with until the next day. Wow. It really does require judiciousness - a spray in the air, then walking through it, and perhaps a dab at pulse points (but not all of them!). Great, but consider yourself warned.

Daphne Guinness is probably 1 ingredient away from being a total soup, but as it stands, its about as full a perfume as you can make. Citrus/resinous, hugely floral, incense/oud. And thats just the starting place. It seems to start as a sort of oud floriental with an enormous bitter, resinous orange note and saffron and Id swear some bay or some other green culinary herb. From there it kaleidoscopes through densly floral combinations as well as classic amber, vanilla, patchouli accords. This is not so much a perfume with a classic three-tiered progression as one built of mostly basenotes. In this sense, its probably categorically closest to an oriental. Although they have different tones, the elements all seem to share roughly the same density. From the topnotes through the heartnotes they just bounce off each other and youre constantly smelling some new accord take flight. By the drydown, DG feels like an incense chypre, with a three-part patchouli/oud/labdanum combo in lieu of a classic moss/labdanum base. Oud is the overused, overstated perfume element of the last few years and due to its potent nature, it is usually at the heart of an accord. But using a moderate dose of oud along with patchouli and labdanum to resemble a chypre base seems like one of the more inventive uses of the material.

How unique and unexpected within the Comme des Garcons line: a retro white floral.

The nicest part of Daphne is the top notes, a rich bouquet of powdery white florals held in check by orange and an undertone of vanilla. It's a colorful and vibrant blend, and very pleasing to my nose. Of the flowers, tuberose is the most evident, followed by jasmine, but this is a fragrance that owes more to rich mixed forals of the past than niche favorites like Carnal Flower and A La Nuit. A certain mushroomy quality that others have mentioned is present, but it's subtle, and quite removed from the likes of Dans Tes Bras ( which I find to be rather frightening )

As the orange fades out, the florals become drier and slightly smoky, like that same bouquet has been left to dry by a fireplace, in a room filled with incense smoke. Most of the florals of this genre tend towards excessive sweetness to my nose, but the intensity of those notes in Daphne is increasingly tempered in the drydown with a faint soapy bitterness along with hints of smoke. No oud to my nose, no oud at all, but that doesn't detract from the whole.

Despite being a very intense fragrance in its composition, Daphne is not loud to my nose, standing only slightly about average in sillage and longevity.

I don't think I'd wear Daphne, but I'm glad it exists.