Is this marijuana musk worth the hype?
(Picture: Illustration By Lydia Thomas)It’s been said that perfume is ‘medicine for the soul’, but I’d go further and call it a drug, a Class A way to huff a hazy fantasy that propels you into a cloud of beautiful self-delusion.
Usually perfumes are manifestos in metaphor, with chunky oud woods signalling brutish virility, for instance, or the overripe humidity of jasmine suggesting thighs and sighs in the dark. But conceptual fashion house Comme des Garçons delights in jettisoning portable poetry in favour of the prosaically strange: ozone and metal (Odeur 53), dust on a hot light bulb (Odeur 71), desert dragstrip at high noon (Tar).
Given Comme des Garçons’ form in elevating the ordinary, it’s no surprise the brand isn’t beating around the bush when it comes to perfume as a narcotic. Roll up for Ganja, an olfactory hologram of the smell that used to waft from under my older brother’s bedroom door as he contemplated the cosmic properties of the mail-order plastic pyramid he’d placed over a banana to stop it from browning.
After opening on the dissonance of piquant black pepper against the unwashed tang of cumin, Ganja sparks up into an unmistakable snootful of cannabis. Hemp is pretty much the whole story here, spiked by nuances of piney mastic and grounded by patchouli and incense. The effect is bitter, green and chilly, a celebration of herb rather than smoke. Pass the Ganja for a legal high — and hard looks from bobbies on the beat.
