Hey Fellow Fumies,

My mate Jordan has often talked to me about todays fragrance and when I saw it for a reasonable price on a friends sell list I jumped at the chance. As you may know I was taught by Nuns and then Jesuits and there was an enormous amount of RC Church going involved in my formative years, not to mention my choir years.

Comme des Garcons Series 3 Incense: Avignon 2002

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
French labdanum, spices, incense, chamomile, vanilla, patchouli, ambrette, oakmoss, musk, olibdanum, myrrh, Brazillian rosewood, Virginia cedar, elemi

If you want to know what church smelled like, it may still, then you need to get your hands on Avignon. It opens like the refectory where we would get ready for the processional entrance and the priest would have his censer in readiness: incense, frankincense, myrrh, wood, men and boys, excitement. At once spicy, woody, aromatic and smoky Avignon becomes woodier and darker as it wears on the skin, but there is also a sweetness that emerges from time to time and becomes more prominent towards the dry down. A circular and circuitous fragrance, it feels linear because you keep coming back to the same pieces but in different arrangements, so similar but not the same. One moment you think the woods have moved into stay, next it’s all about the smoking incense, then vanilla-esque warmth and resins. There even seems to be a wood wax bit like they shone the pews and wooden kneeling pads, and also a candle wax accord. Am I imagining things? Also the scent of a blown out match and something quite alcoholic. Towards the end it fades slowly, never losing its integrity, just intensity, and remains beautiful and haunting to the end.

Unusually for an incense fragrance I get quite a long wear 5+ hours and counting on this occasion, but I spritzed in the cool of evening, in the day with more heat and movement the lifespan is a good deal shorter. This is a wear it for myself fragrance, though I imagine you could wear it almost anywhere except close working/fragrance phobic workplaces. It would be especially fun to wear to church, dinner with clergy or anyone, shopping, picnicking, movies etc.

Photo Stolen ryanphunter

Further reading Birgit from Olfactoria’sTravels writes at PerfumeSmellin’Things
LuckyScent has 50ml/$80 and .7ml/$3

Have you been to Catholic rites? How does the incense in Avignon effect you? What if you aren’t from a Catholic background, does incense still effect you?

So many new questions every time I find some kind of answer for another one. It is kind of exciting to be questing though,
See you tomorrow.
Portia xx