"Sewing Machine" from Comme des Garçons

An Unexpected Foray into the World of Perfume

My father’s shop is situated in a shopping plaza in Walnut Creek, California. One of our neighbors in the plaza is a ballroom dancing school, who are my favorite neighbors for a couple of different reasons. One, as far as I can tell, they have quite a prestigious reputation. The instructors are former European dance champions and it’s enjoyable to watch them dance through the windows. Two, I love people-watching. Their clientele is of a very specific ilk, which is people who are serious about ballroom dancing. I’m a big fan of their dance attire— the flowing dance pants and heeled dance shoes, the well-constructed dresses and tailored dress shirts.

About 18 months ago, the ballroom hosted a big recital. There were nearly 100 audience members in attendance, all dressed to the nines, providing an incredible people-watching opportunity for someone like me. When the recital finished and people filtered out into the parking lot, one of the recital attendees walked over to our shop. She was an older Japanese woman, in her late-70’s if I had to guess. Extremely chic, from her haircut to her outfit. She said that she lived in Paris and had never been to Walnut Creek before, so it was her first time ever in our store.

This woman had a quiet demeanor. I had the feeling that she wanted to browse in peace, so I let her browse. She looked at every machine in our store, taking time to examine each one. She spent a particularly long time on the sergers and was fascinated by the Baby Lock combination machines that do both overlock and coverstitch using a tensionless system (Automatic Thread Delivery). After an hour or so, she told me she wanted to buy the Baby Lock Accolade, so I brought one down to the register for her.

At the register, she noticed people checking their machines in for repair and asked if we do repairs in-house, which we do. She perked up, and walked over to the shelves where we keep the machines awaiting service, running her hands across them like books in a bookstore. Then something strange happened. I heard her sniffing — smelling — she was smelling all the machines! Up until that point she was quiet and reserved, but suddenly showed excitement, almost seeming as if she was intoxicated. She asked if she could please see the room where we fix the machines.

I took her back to the repair department, which is a room tucked into the back of our shop. A couple of our technicians were in there working. She started sniffing everything— me, our techs, their tools, the oil, the inside of the machines they had splayed open on the workbench, the lint on the floor, the air compressor, the individual machine parts on the shelves, the inside of an empty featherweight case— EVERYTHING.

What the heck was going on?

It turns out that this woman is a bigwig in the fashion world, creating her own fashion label back in the 1970s called Comme des Garçons. Not only does her company make clothes, but they make perfumes as well— thus, all the sniffing. She said that the aroma of our repair room and the inside of old sewing machines contain an “old-world industrious beauty” that she desperately wished to capture and encapsulate in a perfume.

Initially I didn’t believe her. My dad thought it was a joke. But she was all too serious. Within a week, my dad was in conversation with their lawyers, and contracts were signed. She soon returned with a team of perfume people, who collected all sorts of stuff from our store.

The process of making perfume is fascinating. The first step is gathering raw materials, which typically includes natural sources like flowers, fruits, spices, woods, and resins, as well as synthetic compounds created in laboratories. In this case, Comme des Garçons came into our shop and took all sorts of different stuff: sewing machine oil, old sewing machine parts, tools from our repair room, an old Pfaffs Hobbymatic and Bernina 930 Record from the boneyard, as well as an original wooden case from a 1930s-era Singer Featherweight. They sat and watched intently over the shoulder of our technicians as they repaired a handful of machines, all the while collecting shredded fabric, thread, and lint removed from those machines. They insisted on taking the t-shirt and jeans my dad had worked in all day, and they even took trimmings from the beards of our two technicians, Danny and Josh.

After this collection day, we didn’t speak to any of the perfume people for months. From what I understand, as the perfume-making process continues, the fragrance compounds are extracted from the collected objects through various methods such as distillation, solvent extraction, expression (cold pressing), or enfleurage. The perfumers (also known as 'noses') carefully blend different fragrance oils in precise proportions to achieve the desired scent profile. These oils are typically mixed with a solvent such as alcohol to dilute and stabilize them. After blending, the perfume mixture is allowed to age for a period of time, ranging from several days to several months. This aging process allows the different fragrance notes to meld together and develop a more harmonious scent. Finally, after this process is completed, the perfume is ready to be bottled.

We are excited to announce that the perfume Comme des Garçons made from our shop’s repair room has finally been bottled and will officially be available for purchase on May 23rd, both online and in fragrance retail stores throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. They were kind enough to send samples to our shop, and I must say that the perfume smells exactly like the inside of an old machine. To be perfectly honest, I’m not convinced that people are going to want to wear this, because you WILL smell like the inside of an old sewing machine. When I get home from work I take a shower so I don’t smell like a sewing machine, but the people at Comme des Garçons insist that the fragrance is complex and unique in a way that perfume aficionados will find appealing.

“Seductive incense entangled with mechanical roots. Ardent woods set boldly aflame. Resinous depth illuminated by beetroot brights. A ceremonial clash of contrasts. A radical revelation of blazing harmonies. Through deliberate overdose and rapturous expression, Sewing Machine presents an unexpected unison. An olfactive congregation of desire. The archetypal associations of the factory mechanic seen and subverted through the distinctly disruptive gaze of Comme des Garçons. Sewing Machine is an encounter between religious fervor and earthen reality, a ceremonial clash of perplexing contrasting tones that leaves you in rapturous delirium.”

If you are interested in purchasing a bottle of this perfume, you can hit the button below to pre-order before the May 23rd release date. It’s $150 per bottle, but you can use the discount code COMME15 to save 15% at checkout.

If you don’t want to fork out $150 to smell like a 50-year-old sewing machine, but you’re curious what it smells like, the perfume will be available at select fragrance retail stores around the world. Just ask them for a test sample of Sewing Machine by Comme des Garçons and they will let you smell a spray.

Thank you for reading.

-Cale