Comme des Garçons- Monocle Scent One: Hinoki

I'm not an outdoorsy person. Between mosquitoes and other insects feasting on my flesh, the lack of fine vegetarian dining and the requirement to wear ugly shoes, I'd rather stay in the city, thank you very much and go see the Ocean every once in a while. But if I had to choose a non-beach nature-friendly fantasy it would be of a log cabin with an outdoor hot tub overlooking evergreen woods.

Monocle Scent One: Hinoki by Comme des Garçons is that place. Once the weird turpentine note I get five minutes into it fades, that is. It's actually an official note, not a trick my nose plays on me, which makes me wonder why would anyone find it necessary to add that of all things. Not that it's really off-putting, but turpentine distracts from the meditative quality of the resin-wood-incense combination, though not for very long. On my husband's skin, on the other hand, there's no turpentine. He gets a lot of tree sap, but nothing chemical. I guess it's one of those CDG quirks. After all, they are the guys who came up with the concept of the Synthetic series, featuring cleaning solvents, plastic leather and tar.

I remember reading some of the guys on Basenotes decalring Hinoki as a super masculine scent which women should never wear. All I can say to that is: "Ha!". I find it perfectly unisex, but then again, my scent twin is a guy, so what do I know? In any case, Hinoki to me is mostly camphoric pine, clean incense and lots of cedar. The dry and green qualities make it a very attractive summer perfume for me, as it cuts through the NYC August air and makes me feel clean despite the stinky soup. But it's equally nice as a cozy indoors winter fragrance and I find myself reaching for the bottle throughout the year, though admittedly not as often as my husband does.

Comme des Garçons- Monocle Scent One: Hinoki ($145, 50 ml) is available from Luckyscent (they also sell samples) as well as from Barneys, which is where I bought my bottle.

Art by the very talented Craig Stephens, fantasy hot tubs from trendir.com