Black Eau de Toilette by Comme des Garcons is a Oriental Woody fragrance for women and men. Black Eau de Toilette was launched in 2013. The
Modern dark smoky addictive perfume, men and women can both wear it. White and black packaging with logo of Comme des Garçons Black stores. Notes: black pepper from Madagascar, incense of Somalia, leather, liquorice, birch tar, pepperwood, cedarwood, vetiver
Not to single anyone out, but there's a jar of black liquorice in the wooden herbal medicine cupboard next to the yarrow and nettle, and I certainly didn't put it there.
While I make the out-of-place discovery, a neighbour two streets over is burning raked leaves. With my face buried in the herbal cupboard - why on God's green earth is there a jar of fucking liquorice in here? - I'm too far away to enjoy the primal bonfire smell, but I can detect that someone is burning something organic nearby.
Black pepper, without the tickling note that makes you sneeze, joins the black liquorice in the wooden herbal medicine cupboard. Instead of being another misplaced food item, it somehow unifies the pepper, liquorice, and cedar, and the complementary trio pushes the strong medicinal scent aside.
Frankincense - not just "incense", but very-absolutely olibanum - charges to the front of the race after 10 minutes of aerobics (my preferred time to test perfume is when I'm exercising), overtaking the black pepper, liquorice, and cedar, though only by a short distance.
This is fucking heaven. It's smoky, but not burny; it's mysterious, yet naive in its captivation. Frankincense holds its distance as the clear front-runner, keeping the pepper and liquorice from turning into permanent-marker black.
Alas, my visit to heaven was brief. (😭) After about 15 minutes, frankincense loses momentum and is overtaken by the other runners. It's still very much in the race, but the new configuration of the three competing notes isn't as wow-inducing as when frankincense was in the lead.
Black pepper, liquorice, cedar, and frankincense somehow coalesce into gingerbread, the proper old-fashioned European kind that tastes better five months after baking. No heavy sugar glaze, no dusting of powdery icing sugar, just a dense, almost-stiff loaf of gingerbread that can be sliced like black rye.
And I mean, it's a good gingerbread. It's actually a really fucking nice gingerbread. If I were looking for a gingerbread that wasn't too gourmand but still clearly gingerbread, Black would be the hands-down winner. But for 15 minutes, I got to experience heaven, and how does "a really fucking nice" gingerbread even compete with that? Exactly.
(TBH, I'm tempted to retest this one to see whether a more generous application will lead to a longer trip to heaven.)
⚜️ Black, by Comme des Garçons


















