Stephen Jones
Stephen Jones (2008)

Although my sample is marked CDG as its house, here on Basenotes, Stephen Jones is not only the name of the scent, but that of the house as well.

At first clove (dark), carnation (bright) and rose (warm) leap out at you, all with equal assurance and perfectly balanced. You can detect all three at once. The jasmine and heliotrope bring in a softer middle heart note, but the spiciness of the clove and carnation combo remain nicely center stage.

For once, the Gaiac wood is not poured on in bucketsful, but only pops in from time to time in the dry down to remind you it is there. The cumin, vetiver and amber are another trio beautifully blended and hovering below the spice.

I am rather impressed with this as a spicy carnation scent, great for both men and women, but I think more successful with men, as the base notes would I believe blend better with a male's body oils and chemistry.

I sampled this from a bag of samples passed on by a friend de-cluttering her collection of freebie samples and was prepared to toss it off with a bitingly dismissive epigram, but I am fooled again. There in the vast 50 sample bag was one that was worth its salt.

Unreservedly recommended for those who thought no modern fragrance of quality could ever again be created. Bravo!

Fun and weird, but wearable. Lots of fizzy, zinging aldehydes and a strong violet note. This is combined with an odd (myrrh?), dry, ground stone/mortar accord, a touch of indolic heliotrope/jasmine, and even a bit of a metal-tinged nitrile/iodine blood-bilge note!

A HUGE burst of aldehydes quickly dries down to a super-soapy ultra modern violet. No sweet candies here, these violets are punched through with black pepper - as savoury as a violet can likely get. And if by "meteorite" SJ means "stone" then this frag is bang on the money.

The only problem for me is that I really don't get a story - A Unicorn Spell by Les Nez (despite it's twinkly fairytale name) does far more for me in all categories:
Stone Cold? Tick. But where Unicorn actually feels like a cold slate near a stream, SJ leaves the stone randomly floating in a formless void.
Violets? Tick. But where Unicorn buries them deep in wet mossy earth, SJ leaves them hanging in mid-air.
Clean? Tick. But where Unicorn washes you with moonlit spring water, SJ smells like a brand new bar of uber expensive soap.

I totally get all the other notes, the roses, the heliotrope, and they are undoubtedly handled with incredible skill but the sum of it leaves me, however impressed, completely unmoved.

Stephen Jones has an incredibly modern feel, the sillage is moderate and it lasts all day long - the dry down is hugely linear, almost disappointingly so, and after a few hours I almost get a little irritated there isn't more to this clever frag. It's so completely clean - if you are going to claim you fell to earth from outer space then I'd like a little more rock and roll weirdness in the base please.

While looking for my ultimate violet perfume I fell hard for A Unicorn Spell - Stephen Jones feels to me like a very accomplished one trick pony.

I missed all the meteorite/magma hype surrounding this release and was able to approach it with an innocent nose.
A strip lit violet explosion (the flower more in evidence than the leaf), this is a soapy, aldehydic blast, that will bathe you in a cool mauve light. Curious, as the main counterpoint here is clove, a note that typifies warmth, but the experience of this perfume is of being in a chilly temperature-controlled black-lined room with that mauve light playing. At times almost grapey (as in grape flavour soda or sweets), it's calculatedly dotty. A bit of heliotrope skulking in the corners, adds a trace of knowing mournfulness.
I find such sweet, soapy creations easy to wear, perhaps a little too easy to truly love them. And, indeed, with subsequent wears, as my nose grew familiar with it, the excitement level flatlined.

I don't like the smell of it. To me SJ smells synthetic-soapy-fruity. I am fully aware that most 'natural' smelling fragrances nowadays are made from synthetics, but this one doesn't try to hide the synthetic smell, and with an initial blast of aldehydes it becomes too much and nauseating for me.

Genre: Floral

Aldehydes and what smells to me an awful lot like myrrh pop right out when I apply the Comme des Garçons fragrance for Stephen Jones. (Is this myrrh smell-alike the note that they call “meteorite” in the press release? Or perhaps the “magma?”) The combination results in a very dry, astringent accord in something like the style that noses Bertrand Duchaufour and Mark Buxton have brought to this line before.

Stephen Jones remains bone dry as it develops, but its midsection reveals an assortment of spices – most notably clove – alongside the stark woods and incense-like notes. The violet touted in the official descriptions takes its time emerging, but when it does it is a big, big blossom, though thoroughly pressed, dried and ground down to powder. Once the woody violet accord at Stephen Jones's heart takes shape it plays along in a linear fashion for quite some time. The closest thing to evolution that I perceive here is the violet note growing slowly but steadily louder until the dry (How many times can I use “dry” in one review?) wood and vetiver basenotes take over.

The overall vibe here is extreme austerity, and if you enjoy the stony texture of, say, Dzongkha or Avignon, this new scent will probably appeal. I myself would take either over this, especially at $175 US for 55 ml. Stephen Jones exudes the same attitude as the black-clad twenty-somethings who crowded the underground clubs of SoHo in my youth (yes, waaaaay back, when SoHo actually had underground clubs). It's an aura of “cool” so intense you might as well just give up trying and admit you are a hapless member of the middlebrow bourgeoisie. I can't decide whether wearing it makes me feel chic, or like a poseur. You'll have to decide for yourself.