Comme des Garcons Avignon

Comme des Garcons came into perfumery the way Rei Kawakubo came into fashion, by arguing with it. The house's Series releases are conceptual sets rather than commercial flankers, and Series 3: Incense, issued in 2002, is the most admired of them: five fragrances built around incense as it is burned in five different places. Avignon is the Catholic one, named for the French city that held the papacy in the fourteenth century, and it is widely credited to Bertrand Duchaufour, then early in the run of work that made him the reference perfumer for smoke and resin. Comme des Garcons publishes the brief plainly, incense to make one dream of a spiritual journey across the world's historical centres, and lists the materials as Roman camomile, cistus oil, elemi, incense, vanilla, patchouli and palisander.

What that produces is startlingly literal. The first minutes are cold stone and smoke, a dry and slightly bitter camomile and elemi opening with an aldehydic lift that reads as air moving through a very large empty building. Then the resins take over, labdanum-rich cistus with myrrh and olibanum, and the effect is unmistakably church, the sweet-acrid smell of a censer swung ten minutes ago. Underneath, cedar, rosewood, patchouli and a trace of oakmoss keep it grounded, while a thin thread of vanilla and musk stops it turning sour.

It is not a seduction fragrance and was never meant to be. Avignon suits people who want scent to do something other than flatter, worn to a gallery, a concert, a long evening indoors. In a Cape winter with rain on the windows it is close to perfect; on a hot afternoon it can feel like standing too near a bonfire.

Performance is very good for an eau de toilette, six to eight hours on skin with the smoky core still detectable on a jacket the next day. It has stayed in the catalogue for more than twenty years with no reformulation announced by the house, which is unusual and part of why collectors trust it. Expect strong reactions in both directions: the ratings are high, but so is the number of people who try it once and never return.