COMME des GARÇONS

About COMME des GARÇONS

COMME des GARÇONS is a Japanese label begun in Tokyo by Rei Kawakubo in 1969. Its fragrances extend the same questioning spirit found in its clothing, treating scent as another medium for challenging familiar ideas of form, beauty, and value.

History

Kawakubo began the label in 1969, while the company Comme des Garçons Co., Ltd. was formally established in March 1973. The house presented in Paris in 1981, bringing its unconventional silhouettes and use of black to an international audience. Fragrance followed with the original COMME des GARÇONS Eau de Parfum in 1994, which the official perfume site identifies as the brand's first parfum.

Philosophy & Signature Style

The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes Kawakubo's work through the idea of “in-betweenness”: spaces such as fashion and anti-fashion, presence and absence, or design and non-design. The perfume line applies a comparable approach to smell. Rather than relying only on familiar floral or citrus structures, it has explored ink, metal, oxygen, hot stone, industrial materials, woods, resins, and incense, often framing these experiments as “anti-perfumes.”

Iconic Fragrances

The 1994 Eau de Parfum combines spices, resins, woods, honey, rose, and incense in the house's original olfactory statement. Odeur 53 turns abstract impressions such as oxygen, flaming rock, mountain air, metal, and nail polish into an anti-perfume, while COMME des GARÇONS 2 builds contrasts of light and shadow around ink, incense, amber, patchouli, aldehydes, and woods. Together, these works show how the brand moves between wearable fragrance and conceptual design without treating the two as separate practices.