# Comme des Garçons — Comme des Garcons Series 7 Sweet: Nomad Tea > Nomad Tea belongs to Comme des Garcons' 2005 Series 7: Sweet, a conceptual collection by Marie-Aude Couture that interrogates the idea of sweetness, casting each scent as a "guest." The nomad's offeri ## Essence Nomad Tea belongs to Comme des Garcons' 2005 Series 7: Sweet, a conceptual collection by Marie-Aude Couture that interrogates the idea of sweetness, casting each scent as a "guest." The nomad's offering, in the brand's words, is "a sweet that is rough and exotic, edgy and almost uncooked." In practice it is a green mint-tea fragrance — wild mint and artemisia over green tea and geranium, with a sugar accord and a smoky woody base. It is widely treated as the standout of the Sweet series and one of the genre's more beloved tea scents, prized for evoking North African sugared mint tea rather than the generic green-tea note common to the category. ## Scent Profile The defining tension is mint versus tea versus smoke. It opens bright and aggressively minty — crushed wild mint and spearmint, sweetened — which to some reads charmingly like sugared mint tea and to others like toothpaste or, as one wearer put it, the scent of a posh dentist. As it settles, green tea and a smoky woody undertone take over, the geranium becomes noticeable, and the sugar calms down. Several wearers report a burnt-sugar or caramel impression where the sweetness meets the smoke. The artemisia adds a dry, bitter, hay-like herbal edge that keeps the scent from reading as a simple novelty. The overall effect is a refreshing, herbal-green, sugared mint-tea fragrance built on a smoky-woody spine. One important caveat: the scent is unusually chemistry-dependent. Some wearers get a clean, cold iced tea with lemon; others get smoked black tea with rum; and a few pick up jarring synthetic or barnyard facets. The series as a whole earned a reputation for being even more chemistry-fickle than usual, so the experience genuinely varies from skin to skin. ## Performance Performance is modest, as is typical for the line. The most common complaint is that it does not last as long as wearers would like, though that lightness is also what makes it work for the office. Longevity and sillage both sit around moderate, and the smoky woodnotes tend to surface periodically rather than as a constant base. This is a light, close-wearing scent rather than a projector — well suited to warm weather and workdays precisely because it never turns heavy. ## Wearing Context Nomad Tea is a warm-weather, daytime, office-appropriate refresher — a cool, clean scent that one wearer summed up as perfect for work because it is not heavy. It is genuinely unisex, with the brand and many wearers emphasizing its hot-summer mint-tea character; one even wanted to wear it to a garden party. A minority experience it warmer than cool — a hot mint tea with an ambery, almost cough-syrup sweetness and a green artemisia touch. Either way it reads casual, brisk, and conversation-starting rather than formal or sensual. ## Comparisons & DNA The reference most often raised is Gobin Daude, specifically Nuit au Desert and Biche dans l'Absinthe, for the dry, smoky, herby artemisia-and-wood drydown — one wearer called the Nomad Tea base very similar to Nuit au Desert. Within its own line, the closest cousin is Series 7 Sweet: Wood Coffee, which shares a sweet, slightly musty, boozy-woody character. For the tea note itself, Tokyo Milk Poe's Tobacco comes up as a comparison, with the distinction that Nomad Tea reads as genuine sugared mint tea rather than a generic green-tea accord. It is held distinct from CdG's own Series 3 Incense entries, which are darker and resinous rather than green and minty. ## Reception Reception is strongly positive among niche enthusiasts, and the fragrance is repeatedly singled out as the best of Series 7: Sweet — even reviewers who found the broader series less adventurous than CdG's Leaves, Red, or Incense lines named Nomad Tea the pick of the litter. Devoted fans place it among their top favorites and the best of the herbal-aromatic genre, while the dissenters fix on the toothpaste or dentist impression, making it a genuinely polarizing-but-loved scent. A recurring theme is its discontinuation, which made the original hard to find and turned tracking down a bottle into a small quest; the 2017 reissue was greeted with relief. The chief value criticism was always the original's price relative to its playful character. ## Versions & Reformulation Originally released in 2005 as an EDT, Nomad Tea was reissued in 2017 as part of the Olfactory Library range. The composition is reported to remain intact, with only the packaging updated to a trendier look. Reaction to the reissue was mostly positive on the juice itself — wearers were simply happy to have it back — with some grumbling that the new bottle is less attractive than the original and a general nostalgia for the old presentation. No significant reformulation complaints about the scent surfaced. ## Acquisition Notes The 2017 Olfactory Library reissue made Nomad Tea broadly available again as a 50 ml EDT through CdG stockists and department stores. Original 2005 bottles trade on the secondary market and were, before the reissue, genuinely sought-after. At the original series price of around $80 for 50 ml it was considered expensive for a playful scent, a complaint the reissue largely eased. Because the scent is so chemistry-dependent — clean iced tea for some, smoke or barnyard for others — sampling before buying is strongly recommended. ## Notable Facts & Lore - Series 7: Sweet was a deliberately conceptual exercise in asking "what is sweet, who is sweet, how sweet or not sweet can sweet be." - Nomad Tea was positioned as the wandering-philosopher "guest" of the collection. - Its chemistry-fickle reputation is part of its lore — the same scent can read as iced tea on one wearer and something far stranger on another. - It is frequently cited as evoking genuine North African sugared mint tea rather than a generic green-tea accord. - Discontinued after its original run, it was reissued in 2017 to relief from fans who treated it as the rescue of a long-lost scent.