FRAGRANCE | Cyber Garden EDT by CoSTUME NATIONAL: A garden with no zen

halfwhiteboy - Cyber Garden by CoSTUME NATIONAL 01

Cyber Garden. I see the name and it conjures images of an artificial garden of sorts in my head. The images are vague, though, and I can't really pin any specific picture down. How exactly is a cyber garden supposed to look like anyway? If any indication, the bottle, which is the standard CoSTUME NATIONAL shape, proffers something full of green, with no flowers perhaps. The quasi-metallic sheen, on the other hand, is reflective of something synthetic or fake. 

The scent indeed is green with an overarching synthetic vibe, a concept shared to some degree by Timothy Han's Against Nature. Sharp citruses sting the nostrils upon spraying. I find it a little unpleasant, especially since any redeeming sweetness that could supposedly soften these rough edges is practically absent. I can't say it's fresh but maybe it is; it's just not to my liking. It's thin and screechy although it does develop an aromatic character after several minutes. Too bad it's nearly lost in all the high-pitched shrieks.

halfwhiteboy - Cyber Garden by CoSTUME NATIONAL 02
halfwhiteboy - Cyber Garden by CoSTUME NATIONAL 03

The synthetic accord soon reveals a vinyl makeup. It's kind of plasticky and of course, odd. As it unfurls, the sharpness mellows just a bit and the previously dominant green is very slowly relegated to the background, with very little sweetness added. The scent carries on like this for several hours, its intensity gradually decreasing, until everything dies down and a mild, earthy vetiver skin scent is revealed.

The fragrance strikes me as a casual, daytime kind of scent that favors warm weather. Although unisex, this type of scent profile—or general vibe at least—is more common among men's frags. Maybe it's a matter of preference but I don't quite like Cyber Garden. I can tolerate it but there's something about the execution that doesn't sit well with me. I had moderately high hopes because the concept was intriguing but compared to Against Nature, the result just left me dissatisfied.

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