À la Recherche du Parfums Perdus: MDCI Chypre Palatin... Purring Chypre

It’s often too simple to seek out that which we may sorely miss.

Change is a constant companion in the Perfumed World, a matter worth addressing and contemplating—and those of us enamored of aroma certainly do a good deal of THAT.

I’m as culpable as anyone regarding the alteration of my Preciouses, the reformulation of exquisite perfumes purely for the purpose of making them more marketable/ accessible… Create something new and give it a fresh moniker, don’t dilute truth and beauty and tell me it’s my old bosom friend. [We’re not fools; don’t teach your grandmother how to suck eggs.]

Beauty and the Beast (1946 film) by Jean Cocteau

Occasionally, though, we encounter a new creation that encompasses the best possible marriage between classic and contemporary perfumery. If I hadn’t purchased a decant of MDCI’s newest Betrand Duchaufour parfum Chypre Palatin, I might have missed such a marvelous opportunity. Purring Chypre.

Perhaps this might be considered a category all its own. There are purring, furry leathers [Cuir Ottoman, for one], purring and growling Orientals [Mona di Orio’s Oud comes to mind], grizzly gourmands [try Neil Morris’ gorgeous new Midnight at the Crossroads Café, created for The Devilscent Project, and you’ll catch my drift]. DSH Vanille Botanique and Felanilla are fine examples of nuzzling animalic vanilla—so why not chypre?

NOTES:

Green clementine, hyacinth, lavender, rose, jasmine, iris,
benzoin, styrax, vanilla, castoreum, costus and leather accord

All begins as green, dulcet fruity meeting and greeting among the clementine/ lavender/ hyacinth trio. It’s lyrical and artistic and flows organically, unforced. This ensemble paves the way for a rapturously swelling floral heart, a chamade in the truest sense of the word [wild beating of the heart]. The everlasting beauty of rose, jasmine and iris is glorified and prolonged by such a complex succulent base; they play on seamlessly, you don’t want them to stop—and they don’t. They can’t, they won’t—because they are so intricately entwined with a myriad of downy resins and the murmured endearments of darkest castoreum and approach/avoidance costus, deftly dosed without discomfort.

There are multiple ways to suggest leather, just pick one: each and every one of the substances in the foundation of Chypre Palatin can impart a nuance that conjures another aspect of it.

When the green has gone, when the flowers faint in the arms of the purring base, a tenderly animalic presence remains: ghostly, enchanting, not unlike Cocteau’s Beast, brimming with a radiant inner beauty.