Monocle Scent One: Hinoki by Comme des Garçons, 2008

This fragrance makes a statement. Unfortunately that statement may be that your pet hamster has just died. It's great fun to put a drop of two of Hinoki on the wrist of an acquanintance and then stand back and watch the reaction. Said responses have been decidedly negative from both casual and more seasoned fragrance wearers. There's the proverbial "hamster cage" remark of course and the proverbial "fresh bandaids" remark and my favorite the proverbial interventionist "get that stuff away from me" on just the tiniest first whiff. On the other hand I like the way it smells. The opening explodes with tree resin. Think of the most fascinating smelling solvent your father kept in a tin pour can on the garage floor. I would unscrew the metal cap again and again to smell this. Very addictive. Throw in the great healthy smell of fresh cut wood planks straight from the table saw and you can understand the attraction to this scent. But the wearing of this on your person as a perfume seems somewhat more problematic. Envelope pusher that it may be Hinoki seems to be a serious creation meant to be seriously worn. This in contrast to perfumes that seem to be created with an extreme profile just to garner attention, Profumum Fumidus coming to mind as an example. Like a clothing designer who has his runway model wear a 5 foot wide sombrero to complement his beachwear collection, it really isn't meant to worn. I like to smell Hinoki in moderation. But do "I" want to smell like this? Good question. Update April 3, 2013 When I smell Hinoki these days I get a lot more of the mildewing concrete crypt than I used to. I don't live among the crypts anymore but I still like that smell. And I still don't like that the fragrance seems to fall apart too quickly.

According to Luckyscent: Cypress, turpentine, camphor, cedar, thyme, pine, Georgian wood, frankincense, moss and vetiver Opens with cedar woodchips, which warm fairly quickly to cedar woodchips in the sun. Ive done enough gardening to recognize this scent (which is much fresher than the hamster cage previously mentioned). It wafts nicely and radiates warmth, in a sense evoking the warm soaking tub of the scents inspiration, although personal associations lead me to recall applying the top layer of cedar mulch to newly planted trees in my yard on a warm spring day. There are hints of pine, but on me, cedar is the star of this linear, nearly monochromatic fragrance. I waited for, and wanted the mossy/moldy aspect others have described, but it never showed. I suspect that the scent benefits from an underlayment of vetiver, but that is not a note I can really identify, nor can I really identify any note other than CEDAR (which also, thankfully, means no turpentine or Vicks VapoRub for me). Its a good, accurate cedar. Throughout there is a warmth to it that I would liken to liquor, but it is an imparted feeling, not a note. If you are after this effect, I wonder if a drop of two of cedar essential oil would suffice. Projection and sillage are great for the first 3+ hours, its only a little more than a skin scent by 5 hours. I may have over applied my sample, although I didnt feel like I could have. I think this one may be easily oversprayed.

Intrigued by the great hype about the Hinoki One Scent's launch, i broke in a well supplied niche shop placed in the town center of Rome in order to test this fragrance. Hinoki is an evocative and very aromatic juice from the deep forest, very heavy in conifers (i perceive mostly cedarwood) and furthermore featured by  frankincense and camphor. As well as some reviewers write, the wearer is teleported in a dark japanese forest early in a winter and misty wet morning. The smell is tremendously sylvan, translucent, aromatic, lemony and mossy with a sort of mentholated incensed soaring aroma. At first spray you can immediately and for few minutes inhale the fresh, sharp, tart-lemony smell of hinoki tree and cedarwood on the side of cypress and pine. The woody and lemony smell is icy and sour. The addition of turpentine introduces a spark of tarry effect that is, if possible, able to enhance the difficulty of anybody to approach to the algid welcome introduced by the juice. This woody and tarry accord is dramatically tart and balsamic for a while, just the time to make the chord of frankincense , camphor and moss to embrace the elements in a barely more massive and dense woodsy link. The usage of lavender, in combination with aromatic thyme, has a balancing role among the elements in order to combine, in a more linear woody-balsamic dimension, the first tart accord with the second camphoraceous one. The outcome is a coniferous smell, balsamic and camphoraceous and the minty-incensey steaming sort of effect is reinforced by the usage of earthy vetiver which exudes, in according with camphor, the typical smell of wet earth. This is a great and unique fragrance slightly comparable, because of its aromatic feel, to the woodsy but more incensed Zagorsk and Cardinal. The longevity is  great, the projection is moderate.