If you’ve ever lived on or near a beach, there is a distinct scent to the dog days of summer. It is the amalgamation of the different sunscreens being used. Underneath it is either the chlorinated water of the pool or the salty breeze of the ocean. I can close my eyes and imagine walking around the pool or on the beach breathing it in. Comme des Garcons ERL Sunscreen captures this hazy scented milieu.
Eli Russell Linnetz
Eli Russell Linnetz has been refracting his childhood growing up in Venice, California into fashion since 2018. In those endeavors he uses his initials ERL. His clothing line has become a quiet sensation. It sells at the Comme des Garcons Dover Street Market stores. He is one of those prodigious creatives who does it all. Besides designing the clothes he also photographs the models wearing them. It ensures a purity of vision. This year he decided to expand into fragrance tapping into the long expertise of Comme des Garcons and creative director of parfum Christian Astuguevieille.
ERL wanted to dial up that same memory I have of sunscreen in the air and water below. He collaborates with perfumer Nelly Hachem-Ruiz. Together they create a perfume which matches the clothing, a distressed realism.
Nelly Hachem-Ruiz
Mme Hachem-Ruiz opens things with the citrus brightness of bergamot matched to the expansive ozonic notes to form a high noon accord. This is the brilliance of the sun in the middle of the day. Instead of using the typical freshening ingredients she chooses the green tinted muguet. This reminded me of the grass growing around the pool deck. Within the earlier ozonic notes comes a whisper of the sea.
The sunscreen accord begins to form around the trio of heliotrope, peach, and a coconut accord. The heliotrope and its slightly almondy profile connected to the creamy peach lactone forms the unctuousness of sunscreen. The piece which is all ERL is the choice to go with a coconut accord. This forms an accord which doesn’t represent the lotion just out of the bottle. It is that late in the day attenuated version where droplets of sweat have left trails through it. A humid musky accord adds that piece. It represents an abstraction of a memory.
ERL Sunscreen has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.
This is the second perfume by Mme Hachem-Ruiz which has impressed me. She has become a new name for me to watch out for. When given the freedom to create she has shown an ability to run with it admirably. I am equally impressed by ERL’s ability to fulfill his fashion aesthetic so completely as a perfume. It seems as if they both know how to abstract the best of summer.
Disclosure: This review is based on a sample supplied by Comme des Garcons.
–Mark Behnke
Editor’s Note: You will be unsurprised to know that completely unique packaging is also a product of ERL’s imagination. He also took the picture.
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