The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Love and Hate arrived in 2025 as part of CGS's debut Co-Existence Collection, a grouping of works that included Bad Dream and Flower Study. Each composition in the collection carried its own thematic weight, and Love and Hate served as an exploration of attraction and aversion rendered in aromatic, woody-spicy terms. The fragrance sits firmly within a small-batch, gallery-style presentation ethos, one that prioritizes considered release over wide distribution. The opening hits with immediacy: pine, coriander, tea tree, and cardamom create a sharp, camphoraceous clarity that recalls cold air moving through evergreen branches. It announces itself with a confidence that borders on abrasive, but the transition soon softens the edges.
What makes this composition worth attention is how it stacks green and floral against deep wood. Pine, tea tree, coriander, and cardamom give the opening a bracing, almost medicinal clarity. The heart softens with rose, geranium, jasmine, artemisia, and cypress, introducing herbal and floral nuance without ever losing the aromatic backbone. Then the base pivots toward darker territory: oud, patchouli, frankincense, sage, rum, and musk. The rum is the unexpected element, an almost boozy sweetness that cuts through the woody seriousness and keeps the drydown from collapsing into standard oriental territory. The balance of cool green, warm floral, and resinous smoke is what defines the composition.
The evolution
The opening announces itself immediately. Pine, coriander, tea tree, and cardamom hit the skin with a sharp, almost camphoraceous clarity that reads as cold air moving through evergreen branches. It is loud, assertive in its first impression, demanding attention rather than requesting it. Then the transition begins, a gradual softening that reshapes the composition without betraying its herbal core. Rose and geranium surface through the green, their velvety warmth tempering the bite of the opening without losing the aromatic intensity that defined those first minutes. Cypress and artemisia deepen the aromatic quality, making the heart feel like a walk through a garden after rain, dewy and alive with green respiration. Jasmine appears as a whisper rather than a declaration, threading through the florals with a delicate, almost ghostly presence.
Cultural impact
Love and Hate arrived as part of a debut collection that signaled CGS's arrival on the independent perfumery stage with a distinct conceptual ambition. The Co-Existence Collection introduced a thematic framework built on duality, with each fragrance exploring a different pair of opposing forces. Love and Hate, in particular, stakes its claim through a structural tension that runs from the sharp, camphoraceous opening to the warm, resinous drydown. The aromatic-woody composition draws on a lineage of green, herbal perfumery while pushing toward a more architectural finish with oud, patchouli, and frankincense.
