As Comme des Garçons Parfums Turns 30, Its Chief Shares Strategy

PARIS — Leave it to Comme des Garçons to come up with a new birthday math.

As the maverick Japanese brand blows out candles for its 30^th-anniversary year in fragrance, it is launching a new perfume with a different number, Odeur 10, starting Wednesday at its Aoyama flagship in Tokyo.

The product is considered an “anti-perfume,” like all the other creations in the portfolio, said Adrian Joffe, president of Comme des Garçons International and chief executive officer of Dover Street Market.

What other brand could launch Love Hurts, a limited-edition scent housed in a silver heart-shaped, Brillo pad-like scratchy coat?

“Rei’s never been one to make a perfume to attract the other,” Joffe said, referring to Rei Kawakubo, his wife and Comme des Garçons’ creative director, who designs most of the brand’s fragrance bottles and outer boxes, press releases and launch installations. (She’s not involved in their olfactive conceptions.)

“That was the concept for the very first fragrance,” continued Joffe. From 1994, it was named Comme des Garçons Eau de Parfum, but is now aptly referred to as The Original.

“I remember very distinctly why we launched it,” he reminisced. “I wanted to make a fragrance, and Rei said: ‘We don’t make fragrances’ — and things like this. I said: ‘It’s just another way of expanding.’”

CDG has never grown vertically. 

“We don’t put down roots, because Rei likes her freedom,” said Joffe. “Freedom is her energy.” 

He reasoned with Kawakubo that perfume could be just like another brand and vector for expressing her values.

“Then she said: ‘OK, that’s a good thing,’” said Joffe, who also promised they’d never do anything that wasn’t creative or new. That’s how The Original came to be. 

“It’s the only one she’s ever liked, actually,” said Joffe. “She really loves the first perfume. She thinks a lot of the others have been interesting conceptually, but she’s always said to me the first one was the best, which is nice. And it’s still here. Eighty percent of perfumes are dead on arrival. So, I’m very proud that this is still a good seller.”

Kawakubo dreamed up its asymmetric bottle, resembling a pebble that has to lie flat. That was vacuum-packed and contained an unusual spicy unisex formula.

“It was very industrial,” said Joffe. “Perfume wasn’t industrial in those times.”

Kawakubo also designed the perfume’s installation with vitamin drip-like bags and press release that came with what became the tagline, “A perfume that works like a medicine and behaves like a drug.” As a backdrop to the last two words was a close-up of an Xanthopan hawk moth on an orchid in Madagascar. 

More than a dozen other “pebble bottle” scents ensued, including Wonderwood and Amazing Green — in similarly shaped packaging, albeit with different colors and finishes. They make up the first “pillar” of CDG’s fragrance business. 

Second are “pebble events,” limited editions of dressed-up pebble fragrances. Dreaming Of had a red-coated bottle with a pink squiggle, for instance. 

Joffe remembered special editions were “great fun” and would sell out. Glitter, from 2013, was the last ephemeral scent.

The Series began in the late ’90s. The first out was Leaves, including Calamus, Lily, Tea, Mint and Shiso. Joffe recalled at the time some people had trouble understanding why anyone would launch five scents at once. But altogether, they gave a conceptual idea of various leaves.

“Red — you have all the red things,” said Joffe, referring to the series of scents named Carnation, Harissa, Palisander, Rose and Sequoia.

“Incense is my favorite,” said Joffe. The idea for that came while in Zagorsk, Russia, where he experienced incense in a church. “The smell was just incredible. And then it came to me: Let’s do it like a voyage around the world of all the faiths,” he said.

That lineup included Avignon, Jaisalmer, Kyoto, Ouarzazate and Zagorsk.

Joffe is also partial to the Synthetic series, comprised of Dry Clean, Garage, Skai, Soda and Tar.

“It’s still very popular, especially Garage,” he said.

The Odeur pillar is made of fragrances such as Odeur 53, Odeur 71 and Odeur du Théâtre du Châtelet, and characterized by Kawakubo specifically as “anti-perfumes.” Each eau de toilette comes in a stately 200-ml. rectangular bottle.

Joffe described Odeur 10, with a black lacquered flacon, as “a chemical composition of clean.”

“We thought for the first perfume in a long time: Do something substantial, really strong and beautiful,” he said.

So Christian Astuguevieille, Comme des Garçon Parfums’ creative director from the start, decided to work with hydrogen peroxide, “a molecular cocoon, softly encapsulated,” said Joffe. 

It had been two years since CDG launched a fragrance, named Zero, in a pebble bottle. That was the final scent created under a partial license with Puig. The Spanish beauty and fashion company had approached Joffe to collaborate after the launch of Comme des Garçons 2, in 1998. To move forward he decided to split the CDG fragrance business in two. 

Licensed to Puig was Comme des Garçons Parfums, which was limited to the manufacturing of the pebble perfumes and their distribution to perfumeries and department stores. Comme des Garçons Parfums Parfums was for the rest of the activity.

“So we had two logos,” said Joffe.

He explained the partial license ended mutually and amicably in December 2023. CDG has two years to wind down stock.

“It was a wonderful experience,” said Joffe, of working with Puig.

Kawakubo designed another bottle that lies flat, with a long, amorphic shape and bubble-full glass. It was dubbed internally the “monster bottle” and has contained two scents so far — Comme des Garçons 5 and Comme des Garçons Dot.

“That came in a kind of bento box,” said Joffe.

He thought fragrances like Comme des Garçons Play Black, Dover Street Market, Marseille and Ganja, falling into the World of CDG fragrance pillar, would be more commercial than the others. (Though it’s “commercial” à la CDG.) Indeed, Ganja turned out to be the most popular of all the scents in Dover Street Market Paris.

Collaborations make up the sixth pillar of CDG’s fragrance business. It’s the only one for which Kawakubo designs nothing, and packaging is labeled Produced by Comme des Garçons.

Tyler Brûlé, Monocle’s founder and editor in chief, approached Joffe about a collab, which turned into Monocle Hinoki. He and Brûlé worked on four scents altogether — with a new one in the works.

“They’ve been very successful,” said Joffe.

CDG never approaches people for tie-ins. Others have included with Stephen Jones, Artek Standard, Pharrell Williams, Kaws, Grace Coddington, Stüssy and the Serpentine Galleries.

“We always wanted to work with people in different genres,” said Joffe. “So we’re working on one with a very famous musician.”

That is, Max Richter, whose scent is coming out next year.

Altogether, CDG has produced 93 perfumes and 119 stock keeping units, including re-editions and special editions. 

Joffe would not discuss figures, but industry sources estimate CDG fragrances generate 13 million euros in total annual sales. The sources expect Odeur 10 will make about 800,000 euros at wholesale in its first 12 months.

Further retail is in the sights. Joffe and Kawakubo opened the first Dover Street Parfums Market, a multibrand seller, in Paris in 2019. There, CDG fragrances rank number one.

“We could do a lot more of them,” said Joffe. “The kind of expansion of the perfume company that we want now to concentrate on will include more retail, and hopefully more DSPMs.”

Odeur 10, priced at 28,000 yen and 180 euros, kicks off CDG’s fragrance anniversary celebrations. After Tokyo, it will be introduced in DSPM in Paris starting Dec. 5. There will be perfume launch events on Jan. 9 at both the CDG stores on Paris’ Faubourg Saint-Honoré and in New York’s Chelsea, featuring installations by artist Yuichi Higashionna, in sync with the fragrance’s rollouts in DSM stores. The worldwide launch will take place in February.

In tandem with the 30th-anniversary celebration, a coffee-table book, “Comme des Garçons Parfums 1994-2025,” will come out and be sold at DSPM beginning Dec. 5. It was written by Dino Simonett and published by Simonett & Baer, with a last page featuring Odeur 10.

Winding down the birthday bash will be the launch in three months of another new CDG scent, Deep Vetiver, in a pebble bottle.

“It’s like a second life now, which we are very excited about,” said Joffe, of the CDG fragrance business.

He looks forward to injecting new energy into the activity, with focuses including on communication and distribution, as well as more representation in Asia.

“We’re not in South America,” said Joffe. “We’re big in Australia; we work with Mecca [and] are in 100 stores there.”

Core markets are the U.S., Italy, France, the U.K. and Japan. Altogether, CDG fragrances are in about 350 doors and 25 to 30 countries.

“Who knows what the next 30 years will bring,” mused Joffe. “We might have a seventh pillar one of these days.”

That could be makeup, for instance.

“I think there’s huge potential to find another partner and grow this business a lot,” said Joffe. “We have all the bases, the treasure — and we have the ideas.”