Grès
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Blackcurrant and tagetes emerge first, green and almost bitter, before orange blossom and peach rush in to challenge that austerity. The coriander adds a strange spiced-herb quality, making this opening smell like a botanical ingredient list rather than a traditional fragrance. It's immediately polarising—arresting in its refusal to be conventionally sweet.
The floral chorus assembles gradually, dominated by tuberose's creamy indolic richness and hyacinth's slightly dusty, green character. Ginger warms the composition considerably, creating a gentle spice that makes the heavier florals feel less cloying, whilst the violet and iris introduce a subtle powdery restraint. The civet begins its work here, adding a subtle animalic undertone that prevents this from ever feeling purely innocent.
Cedar and vetiver emerge to skeleton the composition, anchored by tonka bean's warm sweetness and vanilla's soft embrace. The musk rounds everything into a soft, slightly soapy amber-toned finish. Unfortunately, by this stage, the fragrance has faded considerably—a persistent skin scent rather than a projection, clinging in attenuated form rather than commanding attention.
Cabotine Grès is a study in controlled chaos—a fragrance that wants to be floral but keeps getting distracted by greener, sharper impulses. Jean-Claude Delville has composed something genuinely schizophrenic, and that's precisely its charm. The opening assault of blackcurrant and tagetes creates an almost herbal, slightly metallic green that sits uneasily alongside the sweeter orange blossom and peach; it's like someone's pressed fresh vegetation against your skin whilst simultaneously offering you a fruit bowl. The heart is where things truly unravel into beauty: a densely planted garden where hyacinth and tuberose collide with ginger's peppery warmth, whilst carnation adds a clove-like spice that prevents the florals from becoming merely pretty. There's an almost uncomfortable intensity here—the violet and heliotrope want to pull you towards powdery softness, but the civet in the base keeps tugging everything back towards something animalic and slightly urban.
This is absolutely not a comfort scent. Cabotine Grès wears like a confident person in an avant-garde outfit—slightly abrasive, deliberately unconventional, occasionally challenging. It's for those who'd rather provoke an eyebrow raise than a nod of approval. The unisex positioning feels honest rather than marketing-speak; there's nothing inherently feminine here despite the floral saturation. Wear it when you want to assert presence without whispering. Wear it on difficult days. Wear it because you genuinely like it, not because anyone else told you to.
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3.8/5 (278)