So designer Jun Takahashi of the ‘cult’ fashion house Undercover makes dolls. They’re called Graces, and he makes them out of metal and teddy bears and light bulbs and other things. According to Takahashi,
The Graces spontaneously come out of me, genuinely, while making clothes is something more calculated, an entire process that requires teamwork. But doing both allows me to keep a balance in my creativity. Therefore, it makes sense to me to have everything linked.1
You can find detailed articles about the Graces here and here, and you can watch a video made in conjunction with the launch of the new Undercover fragrances, Holygrace and Holygrapie, here.
The fragrances, made in collaboration with Comme des Garçons, are conceptually linked to the dolls, and there are reportedly limited edition bottles (you can see them here if you scroll down) decorated with similar fabric elements. Holygrace (shown below right) is for the mother doll, and is supposed to be “a perfume of elegance, soap freshness and poison”. It starts with citrus and hot peppery spices (the notes: bergamot, ginger, pink pepper, cardamom, jasmine, frankincense, pimento, ambergris, vetiver, vanilla and styrax), and dries down to a softly spicy, somewhat clean incense with amber and light hints of vanilla. It’s quite wearable and perfectly unisex.
The Independent recently included Holygrace in their list of the ten best spring fragrances, noting that “…it’s a quirky scent, smelling of damp Renaissance churches and incense”.2 Now, admittedly my bar for quirky is set rather high — and who better to blame for that than Comme des Garçons? — but I did not find it nearly as quirky as the dolls that inspired it, and if you want the damp Renaissance churches and incense, I’d think you’d be far better off with Comme des Garçons Avignon. I confess that elegance and poison weren’t the first attributes I thought of either, and I’d be hard pressed to say what did come to mind: I just didn’t find Holygrace nearly as interesting as the other collaborative scents from Comme des Garçons, and I kept forgetting what it smelled like when it wasn’t actually on my skin.
Holygrapie (shown below left) is linked to the child doll, and “reflects the smell of babies, kindness and sensuality”. It starts with milky spices cut with a bit of tart fruit (the notes: ginger, tangerine, rhubarb, black pepper, iris, ylang, nutmeg, frankincense, cedar, sandalwood, vetiver, styrax and patchouli), and for a few minutes I thought I was going to love it, but it very gradually turns sweet, and it takes on that particular smell of baby products (powder and wipes) that some people love, and that other people (people like me) find absolutely nauseating when it’s on their own skin. Mind you, this is no Love’s Baby Soft, and it’s arguably a quirkier fragrance than Holygrace, but all the same, I found it nearly unbearable to wear.
As always, I hope someone who has tried these and loved them will comment and tell me how very wrong I am.
Comme des Garçons + Undercover Holygrace and Holygrapie are available in 50 ml Eau de Toilette. For buying information, see the listing for Comme des Garçons under Perfume Houses.
1. Via Now Unveiling | Undercover’s Jun Takahashi at the New York Times
2. Via The ten best spring fragrances at The Independent.
Note: top image found at Boing Boing.
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That looks like the furry cousin of the thing that lives in the trash compactor on the Death Star.
..only in a lovely frock…
That thing needs a perfume too.
two….
It is totally spooky for me!
Old Dolls’ Smell!!! It reminds me… In the 70´s there was this trend for girls to pile up dolls in their bedrooms… I have tons of those pictures at friend’s birthdays…. this was the mid 70′s.. the dolls would smell of plastic, sinthetic fabrics and cologne (usually something by Avon)
It was Ok while the dolls were new… then it was awful!
Yes, doll-head smell! These aren’t that at all.
CB I Hate Perfume/Christopher Brosius makes a Doll Head scent that is just terrifyingly spot-on!
I will look for it… if I wore that perfume my mom would freak out! she hated the dolls too! hehehehehe
LOL! That was a trend in the ’70′s because little girls in the 50′s and 60′s only had one doll.
Of course girls always will have lots of dolls…but I mean “here” in Argentina, where I live… it was very particular, I wish I had one of the photos here so you could see what I mean…. they ALL had this kind of Stephen King “IT” clown, and a redhead doll.. it was very specific… once the 80′s started the doll pileups were gone and replaced by my little ponies or whatever. It scared me! hehehehehehe
Clowns – YIKES!! Now *they* scare me!
The dolls remind me of the “creative taxidermy” I used to be drawn to at the now-defunct American Dime Museum: jackalope heads, petrifed miniature anteaters, two-headed geese without legs, etc. All sorts of made-up stuff that was endlessly fascinating but totally spooky.
Wow, sounds cool! Never heard of it.
Absolutely. My first impression was, Star Wars.
Ok! so I’m reading through… and fighting the urge to just scroll down, and I’m picturing the bottles in my mind, something “Waaaay out” and…. what a let down!
In the 70′s my grand-mother used to apply “decoupage flowers” on top of plain bars of soap—for the guest bathroom. That’s exactly what those bottles look like! Coty and Avon could have come up with a more cutting edge bottle than that. Maybe that’s just it…. the new avant-garde, is just a return to plain old frompy.
Holygrace sounds good, but on my dresser, that bottle would need a paper bag!
Yeah, I think they’re meant to be purposefully kitsch, but if you’re a perfumista after a nice bottle, that falls flat.
Maybe you could glue one of the dolls to the cap and let the skirt cover the bottle…….
The dolls are lifesize, I think? But you could certainly make your own
LIFESIZE??! I will definitely be having nightmares tonight!
double that!! I thought they were freaky enough when I thought they were small…
OK…all this talk of dolls and nightmares makes me think of those old Night Gallery and Twilight Zone episodes with those awful DOLLS!!! Ack!
Same here. Don’t like dolls.
Lifesize? Just that little picture is creeping me out!
Boo – you just made me LOL (literally!) at the office. I’m getting strange looks….
Happy to amuse…
I’ll start by saying I love art of many kinds, and wish I could attend every Whitney Biennial, but there are still things in this world that I do not and will never understand — including someone making buckets of money via installations of these Grace thingies. But that’s okay; I don’t need to understand.
Those LE bottles? I’m seeing sheepskin “cozies” (with pearl necklace!) for your perfume.
But regarding the scents themselves: I’m a little curious to try both but won’t be rushing out for either, and I like the regular bottles. You compare to Avignon, R., but Holygrace sounds a good deal more complex than Avignon, no, especially with citrus and pepper up top?
Holygrapie did sound promising too, but a baby-wipe drydown would be very unfortunate. (Am I misremembering a mention of grape in the original launch press release?)
Thanks for these timely reviews.
Oh, I was not comparing to Avignon, I was saying if you want (church) incense, go for Avignon. Which is brilliant. I guess you could say this is more complex, but you know, I just don’t think it’s even close to brilliant. And it did not remind me even slightly of church incense.
I feel just that way: I don’t have to understand. But clearly what he’s doing is interesting, and don’t think the fragrances live up to that.
Those dolls are kind of terrifying, but I feel that way about most dolls with the exception of a few. I came home a few Fridays ago to find that my fiance’ mother had procured some hideously creepy monstrosity from Korea that co-worker brought back from a recent trip abroad. We’ve been waiting for it to come to life while we sleep.
My friend was scarred for life (and scared for life) when her elder brothers would tell her that her dolls would play without her. Once she came home and the boys had posed all her dolls to look like they had frozen mid-play when she opened the door. She screamed and screamed and they had to take all the dolls away.
That’s terribly cruel but a bit amusing at once.
Was trying to remember the name of that line of really life-like dolls, the ones that (grown) women sort of seem to adopt as children? I heard a long piece on NPR about it once. Anyway, those totally creeped me out.
Oh, I know what you’re talking about. I know that some women adopt baby dolls as ‘children’ and take them around with them like they’re actual children. There was an incident a few years ago where a woman had left one of these dolls in her car and authorities saw it and thought that someone had left their baby locked in their car and had to break into it only to discover it was a doll.
… get a cat or something.
I have a few acquaintances who have Dollfies which are 18 inch Japanese dolls that you can modify. They’re ridiculously expensive, and ridiculously creepy. Other friends & I refer to them as ‘Creepy Murder Dolls’.
LOL at “creepy murder dolls”! Those might be the ones I heard about.
They might be. I know people who create back stories for these things. They give them birth dates — the day the arrived in the mail. Again, get a cat or something if you feel the need to have something to care for or love. Animals return that affection — or at least pretend to because they want something you have (i.e.; food, warmth, shiny things).
I’ll admit that there was a time when I found them aesthetically interesting and contemplated buying one to use as an artist’s model, but then the price tag and the creep factor advised against it. They have these soulless glass eyes.
One of my anthropology professors / mentor was doing work on this and I just discovered he published a book on the topic a few years ago: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Like-Dolls-ebook/dp/B000OI0N00
And then there is this:
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2008/07/creepiness-continues.html
I looooove Cake Wrecks.
Ack. No.
Oh the horror!
Or one of my favorite cakewrecks:
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/02/hey-everybody-thish-cake-ish-from.html
Oh my. My my my.
I was proud that there was a U. K. cake wreck. Actually a CCC wreck, which I hadn’t even heard of CCC’s.
Cakewrecks makes life worth living, doesn’t it?
http://www.allreborndolls.com/
“reborn dolls” I think this is what you’re looking for…
I saw that BBC documentary. So bizarre and fascinating. I actually had myself a moment when a woman wanted to return her baby/doll because it had a defect. It’s a sign I worked as a social worker for too long when I find myself yelling at the tv, “You can’t send back your child! What kind of parent are you!”
LOL!!!
Oh dear — there is a picture on there that for a quick second looked just like my nephew. I am now officially creeped out.
Yeah, those are the baby dolls that people substitute for their ‘children’. Just creeps me out. They look so real. I mean, it’s amazing that artists are so talented as to create something that’s this realistic down to the uneven ruddy skintones … but they creep me out in a very bad way.
They have adoption papers, etc. Shudder.
There’s something almost sad about it…
Oh boy. I can’t remember the name either but I accidentally stumbled on them on ebay and then (I shouldn’t have) googled them. While I really feel for the minority of women who buy them because of the death of a child (still creepy though), it’s the ones who buy them because their kids have grown up and left that really, really ook me (you really can’t get that your kid grew up? really?). There was one woman who kept hers in a drawer at work and take it out and hug it! Others would actually send out holiday cards w/pics and write about them ‘growing’ – I cannot buy at ALL that a normal adjusted person would behave like that. It’s the freakiest thing ever. (I was dumb enough to read one of these doll forums – wanted to bleach my mind afterwards). Anyway, Holygrapie sounds like the whole concept of these ‘live’ dolls in a bottle. PASS!
You can’t imagine how glad I am to finally know that I was not the only little girl who was creeped out by dolls….those life like ones with the porcelain heads and blinking glass eyes freak me out even to this day. I’m so glad that my own daughter never had the slightest interest in dolls other than some Barbies for a couple years (and that was for the accoutrements I believe) …and these Graces go beyond the regular creepy straight to terrifying.
Yes!!! Those are the ones out of Night Gallery and Twilight Zone – the porcelain ones with those eyes. CREEEEEEEEEPY!
I know…they’re watching….waiting……eeek! My CEO says they’re all possessed by Satan just to freak me out even more!
Oh, Twilight Zone! Does anyone remember the Talking Tina doll episode? “I’m Talking Tina… and I’m going to kill you.”
YES!!! Do you remember The Hand – the one with the dismembered hand that crept around killing people? My brother scared my sister and me forever with that!
Just remembered, The Hand wasn’t Twilight Zone. It was just a horror movie on its own.
Lol. YES! I started making jokes about that when this doll showed up in the condo. It just struck me as so bizarre because I hadn’t seen it before and then I look into the front sitting room and there’s this -thing- in there. Just horrifying. I wish I could find a picture of what it looks like. The body is soft and the head is this celedon & blue painted porcelain and it looks so very angry.
“Talking Tina”! Classic!
Oh God! The Hand!!! I remember that one !!! SCARY!
sheesh, I was way too little to be watching shows like that! What was my mom THINKING?? Of course my big brother totally capitalized on it and basically scared the bejeebers out of me for months!
My brother used to hide under my bed and grab my ankle as I got in, saying in a deep, reverberating voice, “It’s the hhhhaaaannnnd.” I still jump into bed from about six feet out!
Rapple! My brother did that too—the under the bed ankle grab—I would scream….I was only about 6. I developed “the leap” –light switch next to the door: flip it off, then a couple running steps and basically fly to the bed. Which down in the living room sounded like : click, thump thump, thump****PWHA-UUMPP!!!! My parents would holler up the stairs “settle down up there” …but they didn’t understand–I was a traumatized kid! You never knew when the hand or some other creepy thing was going to grab you. Seriously, I did the leap for YEARS. I still don’t like to stand right next to the bed in the dark…..there’s a scared 6 yr old still living inside me somewhere. Same brother also told me that Tarantula’s liked dark, close places …like under the covers at the end of your bed…..I slept curled into a ball for a long time too…..it’s okay–he’s gone BALD.
I’m quite drawn to the quintessentially Japanese weirdness of the dolls (they *are* lifesize) and I’ve loved the Undercover shows I’ve attended in Paris, but I’m totally with you on this, Robin: I find both scents not very interesting and a little nauseating. It’s as though they’d aimed for baby-cute and unsettling at the same time, which suits the look of the bottles and of the creatures, but the “cute” bit veers so much into sweetness (not as in “tooth-achingly sweet” though) that the end result feels unwearable to me.
I like the dolls too – I would like to see some in person.
I confess I only wore Holygrapie twice, and the second time I removed it after a few hours. Blech.
I am completely road weary and bleary eyed today from travel and I did double and triple takes of those ‘dolls’ and was confused and befuddled and a little freaked out until I read your review. Whew! haha The scents sound so utterly ‘meh’ for such a high concept type of thing. I’m just having a big shoulder shrugging reaction to the whole thing.
Well, so am I having a big shoulder shrugging reaction. I do think some of the CdG collaborations have been wonderful…esp. the Monocle ones, and the Stephen Jones, and I liked the Artek one too. These are very meh.
I’m a huge fan of Daphne Guiness. <3 I want a FB of that one of these days.
Ok, that one was impressive & I totally see why people (including Angie) love it, but it was so not me!
I’ve read more negative comments than positive for Daphne – but it really works for me.
That’s not a bad thing — it’s probably one of those ‘love it or hate it’, which is better than everybody shrugging their shoulders and saying ‘meh’.
Hmm.. one was only “wearable” and the other was “unbearable”. Nope, no lemmings here.
But thanks for the review, Robin. You and the commenters made me laugh, which is always good.
The comments, as usual, have gone off in several unrelated but very entertaining avenues, LOL…
This whole project gave me the heebie-jeebies from the get-go, so I award Robin the Way Braver Than I Am ceremonial lapel pin.
(I loved my dolls when I was a kid – but they were fairly realistic-looking dollbabies. Rubbery skin, nylon hair, curved limbs like real babies. I think I had three of them. I’d bundle one of them up and “escape from hostile Indians,” or put her in my backpack with head sticking out, and “be an Indian mama with a papoose, scraping hides and cooking stew.” Played cops-and-robbers, too, but I always insisted on being a girl cop.)
My favorite pin! Thank you.
Having spent all day Sunday sitting on a couch next to a taxidermied bear (in a room full of other such creatures), the doll did not disturb me as much as it normally would. Oh, and another desensitization factor might have been this ad that ran in Craig’s List (I wish I had the original, as it included a picture): “Free Haunted Doll (NPDX)… This doll is free to anyone who will have her. I have broken her feet many times to keep her in place but the feet always heal. She should not be left along with children. She has a foul mouth.” It was pulled off the site the next day. (I REALLY wish I could share the picture.)
This is the second post today that just makes me think Oh My. And two in one day is a lot.
I’ll second that ‘oh my’! I wonder why Craig’s List took it off? J/K
I tried these the first time with Denyse at Colette, and then I got samples … I admit, I’m befuddled. First off, the bottles in person are hideous, in the way that celebufrag bottles can be — very cutesy. Second, the scents — Grapie was unbearable on me, a combo of too sweet, plasticky AND a hint of powder/fresh … shudder. Grace in comparison was merely inoffensive — a faintly incensey, vanilla musk. Honestly, looking at that list of notes again, I can’t think of the last time I felt such a disconnect between them and what I got. I thought I’d love them. This sounds a little dumb, but: they feel like some sort of elaborate joke I’m not in on.
In light of the comments above, I have to tell you I always laugh about that accord you guys mention fairly often at PP: “doll-head.” I don’t really have a good sense of what that smells like in perfume or real life, but it’s a great descriptor.
Note to self: with next shipment of samples for Joe, include doll heads.
You definitely need a doll-head. It smells like … doll-head! (I know — soooo helpful.) It’s a faintly sweet, synthetic smell somewhere between plastic and Play-Doh. And I have no idea why it’s so irritating in a fragrance, but it is.
PS Wait … so …. no GI Joe or Ken for you?
I think I got a GI Joe for xmas when I was about six and almost cried because it was definitely NOT one of the things I wanted. I mean, I’m sure I’ve been around plastic dolls… just not in the habit of sniffing them. I’ll smell a squeak toy to see if it’s a good substitute, okay? I can imagine the synthetic accord… I think I got it from Delicious Closet Queen.
Squeak toy NOT a substitute for doll head. Just sayin’….
You know how “bad” you’ve gotten when you can suss out the subtle difference in scent between “doll head” and “squeak toy.”
Ack. I hate doll head. It’s the sickly, sweetly scent of slowly but surely decaying plastic faces wearing frozen smiles mixed with the more gritty, dusty-dry aroma of polyethylene “hair”.
*Shudder*
I think it’s some musk + vanilla combination that sets me off in this regard; Havana Vanille was the latest and greatest offender.
I think you’re right. I definitely get it in vanilla fragrances.
Yeah. I think the thing about this kind of purposeful kitsch, assuming that is in fact what it is, is that you have to count on your audience being in on the joke — and c’mon, how wide can the audience for this be? At least among perfumistas, CdG is widely known, JT/Undercover is not. So they just look ugly.
You said it up there already, but I’m with you on the Stephen Jones and the Monocles. And even Daphne, although it didn’t work on me (but I haven’t given up yet! If I can ride the Kenzo Elephant….)
This seemed like a waste of CdG talent.
Yeah, and of course these are the most reasonably priced, LOL…I *so* want that Stephen Jones, and would love to have either or both of the Monocle scents.
These fragrances sounds sooooooooo meh. I won’t bother testing them. But I like those futuristic teddy bear dolls….well, at least, from the top down to the *second pair* of arms. Those crazy human-doll-arms that kind of give me the creeps and remind me of a sculpture that is a fascinating meditation on the body, but also kind of creepy (which is at least partly intended, I think):
http://www.michaelrees.com/indexes/Cover.jpg
um yay typos. my post should read “These fragrances *sound*…” and “Those crazy human-doll-arms kind of give me the creeps…”
Oh, those are mondo creepy! Fun, thanks for the link.
CREEPY dolls. They remind me of a quite horrifying Doctor Who episode which featured a zombie child wearing a 1940′s style gas mask. Don’t ask. It was hella scary.
My favorite scary Dr. Who ones are back! The Weeping Angels! yay! I vaguely remember the zombie child…
Love Dr Who – although the Daleks leave something to be desired special effects wise.
I was one of those girls who collected dolls in the 70′s but these things totally creep me out.
Have you seen the latest Doc Who series with the new Doctor? You will be SO disappointed at the upgraded daleks – they are all in primary colours and as frightening as a mobile traffic cone. Don’t know why the programme makers thought red and yellow would make them more sinister …….. As for dolls. Well, give me a teddy bear any time.
Oh yes! My favourite Doctor Who episodes (scare-wise) are those that are vaguely plausible and which have more of a psychological thriller vibe rather than to rely on explosions and monsters. The weeping angels, the gas mask zombies, time paradoxes… having watched the Doctor Who Confidential accompanying the angels episodes, I now know that all my very favourite episodes have been written by Steven Moffat. He’s good at scary.
I remember that episode, zeezee – it’s amazing how creepy that was!
“Are you my mummy?” will never sound the same again.
Ugh! Keep those away from me, please! Feeling queasy now.
oh yeah, they are 100% brain-eaters for sure….
And these just “come to him” ??? scary dolls, scary dude. I’m quite sure seeing the graces in person would inspire a fine round of nightmares.
I promise not to buy you one
“Wow” to all of the above. I cannot help thinking that even Jun Takahashi had hoped for a more positive review of his perfumes (which I doubt), he would be pleased that they have provoked such a wide-ranging conversation full of strangeness!
Maybe!
As a child, I had the brilliant idea of coloring my Barbies’ hair with various flavored lip balms. Just remembering the sickly scent of fruit punch doll head makes my stomach turn a bit.
Never before has a perfume, not even those by Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, elicited such fear in me.
Oh, the perfumes aren’t scary.
I didn’t even read this post yesterday because those doll-statue-figure things were both too creepy and too pretentious. But now I’m glad I dared to read! The comments have made it all hilariously worthwhile.
Good!
I tried both of them yesterday and I’m glad I read the review before because I wasn’t that disappointed. I usually love CdG for the “weird, anti-perfume but great scents” concept. I love Daphne, 2 Man and Stephen Jones. But those two were really a let-down. Holygrace is, IMO, an incense without depth, I missed the usual spices, very not-interesting and I don’t want to smell like the other one. (I smelled them only on paper, though.)
So thank you for the review and the funny comments. I was freaked out by dolls, too, when I was little!
I keep waiting for a fan to show up and defend them, LOL…sorry you did not like them either.
Waving! Here’s a fan of Holygraphie – to my very own surprise I like this one a lot! On me, it’s a nice fresh rhubarb scent with more depth and less tartness than CdG Rhubarb, which later turns into a an embracing soft vanilla with only a trace of rhubarb left.
Not at all my usual kind of scent… but what I like a lot about it, is that it has something very confident in it’s kindness.
Cheers
Safran
Oh good, you finally showed up, LOL…
Really glad it has found fans!
huge fan of Holygrace… smelled it first on a young and pretty, soaking wet stranger at a U2 gig in Moscow… was so drawn to it that had to ask what it was that he was wearing… it did smell of church and frankincense, candles and darkness, deep red velvet, glimmering old gold, Russian icons and warmth… unfortunately, I couln’t get hold of it since then… so, cannot really tell if it might smell anything like that on me… did try Holygrapie, though… and… didn’t like it… flat, powdery and sweet all I could feel… but can totally understand it smells all that wonderful rhubarb and vanilla on someone else…
Glad to see another fan!