Perfume Review: Comme des Garcons LUXE Champaca and Patchouli

Question: after every single brand has jumped on the trend-wagon and created a luxury line within a line, would that saturate the fragrance market with high-priced scents to an extent that exclusivity will loose its elegant sheen and "luxe" won't seem all that luxurious anymore? ...And do you, like me, feel that the moment of such saturation has actually already arrived? And now for Comme des Garcons not just luxe but LUXE duo of $265-for-45ml-of-not-even-parfum creations. Champaca starts wonderfully well, as what I think of as champaca per se, robustly floral, with a prominent green, herbaceous undertone. It then goes through an uninteresting stage when it smells like your basic, fresh jasmine. Fairly soon, however, the scent develops a strong tuberose note, which, thanks to the presence of angelica and pepper, is green and dewy rather then sweet and creamy. After hours and hours of unchanging easy, breezy, beautiful tuberosiness, it simply wears off my skin seemingly without featuring any typical base notes: no woods, no noticeable musk, just fresh, slightly green flowers. Champaca is not something I came to expect from Comme des Gacons. It is not strikingly orginal, it is "simply" beautiful. A good-quality, handsome floral blend. Worth $265 for 45 ml? Not for me. Patchouli. Now we are talking. Now we are talking the birth of a lemming. Now we are talking a new cold weather favorite. It might be called, Patchouli, but the scent is much more than that, it is a complex, ever-changing blend of all things wonderful. First blast is that of peppery incense, dark and warm. A dry, resinous woody note that I take to be oak materializes from the brooding depths of incense. The austere, arid wood slowly becomes a little sweeter, a little softer - this is when I smell fenugreek, which, as we all know, has the same green, meaty, curry-like sweetness as immmortelle. Opoponax covers that woody greenness with a layer of golden powder and vanilla and sandalwood ...oh, vanilla and sandalwood are delicious together, creating a strangely gourmand, warmly-piquant base on which the intricate composition finally rests. And patchouli? Patchouli is everywhere and nowhere at once. It is playing games, hiding in the fleshy verdancy of fenugreek, suddenly appearing from under the black cloak of incense, adding something almost chocolate-like to the woody-sweet notes of the drydown. In other words, the presence of the star note is always noticeable, but never too obvious, never trivial. Is LUXE Patchouli worth $265 for 45ml? I would be lying if I said that I am not longing to buy it...but, no, it probably isn't worthy that much money for that size, in that concentration. Frankly, nothing is. Comme des Garcons LUXE Champaca and Patchouli are available at Luckyscent, in Pyramid (interesting) and Cube (Piguet-inspired?) bottles.