Monocle Scent One : Hinoki
Comme des Garçons × Monocle (2008)

Hinoki is a very nice and understated incense scent. Woody, slightly smoky, calming, calm, collected.

It feels like you've just stepped into a wooden sauna. It's essentially a blend of cedar and camphor notes, with a bit of dryness and fresh greenness from the cypress. If you're a fan of woody and green fragrances, this is perfect for you. While wood notes in fragrances are usually dry or mixed with some sweetness, this scent is more like damp, soaked wood, with fresh vegetation from coniferous trees falling into the pool. There's a slight watery quality to it, which I think comes from the pine note.

I bought a bottle of this at first sniff, but unfortunately, I ended up selling it because of its poor longevity. I just wish it performed better, as this type of scent is right up my alley.

Wet and fresh wood note that is common in many CDG creations. (I think they often smell like pear, too.) This one does smell like cedar. A bit smoky. 2/5 OK.

Absolutely a 500 ton hinoki/cedar bomb. There's some damp conifer + camphor accords too but cedar is the star of the show. Way too much so for me (and I love woody scents)but this is the frag you want if that floats your boat.

Its super linear with average performance.

6.0/10

It's the cedar note from Kyoto. There's a little more to it than that but that's the gist. Great scent, performance pretty terrible (as it goes with CdG for me).

I've always felt like I *should* like Hinoki, but it's never won me over, despite many years of trying. It's the spiritual successor to CDG's excellent incense line (which I love), but somehow it doesn't just connect with me.

Part of it is definitely the pine. Pine is tricky to use because it almost always smells cheap, bringing to mind either Christmas candles or those pine-shaped car air fresheners. Adding a slug of wintergreen mint should theoretically fix that, but doesn't.

Also, Hinoki just smells simple. Don't get me wrong, I know that's a big part of CDG's vision, and many of their scents technically smell simple, but Hinoki lacks the artistry and nuance that can make a technically uncluttered perfume still smell compelling. Instead, it's just pine, mint, and iso e super smoke.

If you want something similar but better executed and more interesting, I'd suggest CDG's own Jaisalmer, which focuses on cedar and other woods instead of the minty pine, to excellent effect.