Comme des Garçons - 2 Man
Yesterday it snowed! Okay, so it was light, and it melted right away, but it snows so rarely in my corner of town that we had fun with it.
It was cold enough though that I realized it’d be my last shot for a while at wearing Comme Des Garcons’ 2 Man. The last time I can remember pulling out 2 Man was on Christmas Eve, and sure enough, one spritz of it on my skin and a little snow brought Christmastime right back to me.
The opening blast always weirds me out just a little. Whatever notes are ascribed to it don’t matter to me. It smells like typewriter ribbons, and I move back through time and space to my ninth grade typing class:
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The memory of it jars me. On the one hand I fondly recall my silly self at that age again, and on the other I can never forget the time I caught an ungodly flu and tried to get through the class typing as fast as I could while stopping every three seconds to wipe and blow my nose. To this day I remember the crazy high fever I had, but I could not bear leaving the classroom to see the nurse. Her office had the stench of death about it. I don’t mean figuratively, I mean literally. Some rodent had obviously died inside the walls, but apparently it hadn’t occured to anyone that removing a decaying animal corpse from the health offices might be a good idea.
I digress. Which is kind of the point about this fragrance. It’s swirly abstractions provoke imaginings of things real and unreal, but also stir memory.
2 Man recalls the way Gres Cabaret seems filtered through a cloud of smoke without smelling smokey. Its woody notes are real but unidentifiable, like staring out a train window and watching the blurry trees fly past. Mutant spices that I know without recognition drift by until we land at nutmeg. The nutmeg of 2 Man’s dry down is warm and dry, mixed into the smeared streaky watercolors of an abstract forest.
Upon reflection, I don’t think this is one of those men’s scents that very many women could see themselves in. Nor can I see just any man wearing it either. 2 Man isn’t too weird, however it’s unusual enough that it won’t be quite to everyone’s taste. Which is fine. All’s the more for me, heh.
EDIT: Oops, forgot to mention a great review of this scent by Basenotes member Indie_Guy (it’s the second one on the scroll down.) I think he’s dead-on with his astute observation that 2 Man seems like a bit of a pastiche comprised of elements from other Comme des Garcons fragrances.