Chypre Mousse Oriza L. Legrand for women and men

I adore this house, but to me this one smells like very expired cheap soap mixed with mold, mushrooms, urine, moss, a strange pungent sweetness and something rotten.

Very offensive even for someone like me, a lover of heavy/pungent animalic fragrances. Very unpleasant, headache-inducing and nauseating.

I wasn't sure how I was going to like this one, because the opening hit me in the face with a huge bouquet of sage and spicy fennel that I was afraid would become cloying quickly. Thankfully, that initial blast of herbaceousness mellows out into a green, earthy dream that's surprisingly still light and sheer. I need to wear this to a Hozier concert expeditiously.

I thought I'd love this based on the notes listed, but I was pretty underwhelmed. It's interesting how many people found this one to be photorealistic - to me, it smelled like unoffensive artificial greenery with a touch of wood polishing wipes. Certainly not bad, but it struck me as quite sweet and not very earthy. It reminded me of something I'd smell on one of my mom's classy friends in the 90s.

An absolute masterpiece. Every scent of the forest is in here- decaying leaves, moist black soil, mushrooms, evergreens, fallen trunks, ferns, fresh green new growth… intoxicating. Absolute perfection- this won’t be for everyone because it is so niche but this is what I love about the art of perfumery- an entire painting was laid before me with this perfume.

This is the most realistic green-mossy perfume I have ever smelled. I grew up near the forest, country side, and I remember quite very well the smell of wet moss, decaying leaves and fresh vegetation. This is it. It does not even smell like a perfume it's just literally the nature. The dry down is slightly more fresh and minty, less mossy. A little bit of flowery sweetness but not so much. Beautiful. I don't even understand how they managed to make this one.

This is the scent of some guy who dropped out of St. Andrews to herd sheep and cultivate (psychedelic) mushrooms. He is outdoors 10 hours of the day but you’ll never catch him wearing North Face/Patagonia/Arcteryx - he braves the elements in Wellingtons, patched up Barbour jackets, and heavy Aran jumpers. When he's not digging around in the dirt, he likes to read homoerotic literature and host game nights for his friends. He enjoys Antonioni films and Spaghetti Western and rugby. He may have grown up around Tories, trustfunds and Protestantism, but he’s a Pagan at heart and definitely bisexual.

I really don't understand how anyone can hate this perfume. It's perfection! This is one of the most cozy, comforting and least offensive chypres I've smelled. Its got a sweet, loamy earthiness that is just divine. It's not astringent at all which is what I was expecting based on the reviews.

Wow, this is so beautiful and incredibly unique.
Simply put this is walking through the forest after rainfall in the fall all bottled up fostering some of the most stunning juice. It starts off with a sweet mint and fennel, then dries down to a very realistic wet earth, decomposing leaves, earth/soil, and lots and lots of green. Oakmoss is definitely prominent in the base, and it sits on your skin all day beautifully. Every time I've worn this I get something different, most recently the mushroom and pine notes came through and damn, it's so nice. I feel like I'm deep in the woods surrounded by nature when I wear this and it makes me so happy. Definitely one of my all-time favorite fragrances. This alongside Le Labo's Baie 19 are two of the best earthy fragrances out there.
I wouldn't change a thing about this fragrance, it's perfection.
You can wear this any season, any time.

Funny how we can have such opposing opinions on scents, i adore this scent while others would not gift it upon their enemies

Unique. Earthy with herbal plants and spicy spearmint. Body is upbeat barbershop. Not floral or sweet.

Distinctive blend of pine needles, soil, mushroom, vetiver. Solid strength/projection. Some damp woodiness with only a little fresh green stem. Impressively different. Creaminess builds in drydown, contrasting brisk note in a way that harmonizes gorgeously. Wow.

Enjoyed trying because there’s nothing else like it and is masterfully blended, just not a personal match. More challenging on fabric.

1ST TRY:
Opens dewy, new cut grass and mild spearmint. Brisk and green.

Complicated notes are exotic and gorgeously potent like vetiver - but, not spiced. Fresh, like a blue scent, but green instead. Intriguingly clean and different. Damp soil note is not bitter or off putting - adds depth that pairs harmoniously like you’ve never experienced.

Dry down is too soapy. Leans feminine/shampoo with curious violet. Exceptional projection is delightful. An hour later, it becomes a little more woody cedar while still soapy fresh.

Very unique, super wearable for all times and hours. Atemporal, fresh,natural,clean feelings,there are thousands and thousands fragrances in the world right now and this truly makes some difference. Good scents, proyection.personally I like.for me 10/10 global

* * *
"for all the dandies of this world"
(from house's description)

Chypre Mousse ("Cyprus moss"), by renowned Parisian house Oriza L. Legrand, has remained relevant and high-quality since it launched in 1914. As my first foray into the Chypre genre, I appreciate its complex shades of green from field and forest. Aromatic notes uncannily disappear and reappear, competing along a deep and disorienting path. While intrigued, I'm surprised I don't care much for this and other Chypres I've tried so far.✿

Scent family: Chypre
Longevity on me: long-lasting

This is my second favorite from the house. This to me is kind of like if Mitsouko and Chanel no.19 had a baby. It has that damp mossy forest of Mitsouko and that animalic funk as well as the greenery that no.19 has. While I enjoy both of those fragrances, I find this easier to get along with and more unique. It's pretty loud and long lasting. Not something I'm comfortable wearing to work, but really enjoy on my days off. The scent is very reminiscent of a forest but still has the feel of well rounded french perfumery. Completely unisex. When I think of who would wear this, I think of Tilda Swinton's character in only lovers left alive. I feel like there's some kind of green floral note in here that shines through. Narcissus maybe? I think I need a full bottle just for its uniqueness.

A mystery...I like it, but there is something off, not sure if I'd want to wear it around. Soggy leaves, incense, perfume that a witch or fortune teller would wear

I really love this. Damp Earthiness but with subtle floral notes and the smallest hint of sweetness. It's both cool and green, but also calm and cozy. Super wearable.

I got a sample and I am really captured by this unusual pleasant, enjoyable, clean fragrance. It is delicate but it stays with you a long time. It is green and earthy. I get hints of fennel, a little mint but also something woody and balsamic. Really original. I would love to find a bottle.

It is rare and very special, while it is a Chypre, I finally have the drydown with Boletus all the time.

Personally I don't like it, but there is no this scent neither close to this in the market I think. Very special, rare, and somewhat weird.

I've a 95/100ml bottle of this for sale or swap in Canada/US - a beautiful and classy masterpiece that leans too masculine for me to wear, but it is so wonderfully composed I wish I could. Every time I take a whiff I smell something different. Smells like the damp forest and earth floor of foliage, with the slightly animalic qualities of oakmoss found in Mitsouko and Diaghilev. At the current price point it is absolutely a work of art. Also smells a bit like mint chocolate from the bright fennel and earthy bitter qualities!

Very interesting, to my nose more so sweet earthy and ambery rather than green in any sharp or intense way. I definitely get the powdery violet, fresh mint, soil-like facets and sweet ambery backbone. There is a slightly chalk like element to it (soil tincture perhaps?). All in all it feels vintage eccentric, definitely odd, but not in a bad way. Not something I would wear personally due to the sweetness, but definitely something worth sampling.

Instant scrub off for me. Def NOT safe for blind buy. I actually got nauseous. I agree with the other reviews. Mothballs, pinesol, toilet cake. Chemical.

This is the second-most complex fragrance I came across after Papillon's Dryad. Unfortunately, even though interesting and very original in its first few hours, all the green notes take a back seat and resins take over the perfume alone for the next 4-5 hours, which is overwhelming. The same happens with those resins in Tom Ford's Vert d'Encense. It is much worse than that, though. resins have their plasticine notes in both fragrances. And I cannot tolerate that. Performance is good. Couple of hours of projection with half-day longevity.

@ilsagold It suits Spring and Fall best. Not too cold and not too hot.

I'm so, so glad I was told about this fragrance. If you are a lover of Christopher Brosius' work, especially his more dirt-focused scents like Room with a View and Wild Hunt, but your skin is like mine where his fragrances just seem to disappear after half an hour, then I can't recommend this enough.

But how does it smell?

I always find forest scents take a few seconds to transport you. This one does so through a sort of 'classic french perfume' journey - a mixture of powdery, slightly bitter florals. Then after about a minute, young ferns sprout and pine needles fall. Then the fennel, a hot, sweet Mediterranean fennel. After that all of the notes, whilst individually detectable, create a beautiful impression, capturing the subjective memory of a forest through light and smells. It's a hot, dewy, sappy forest with mushrooms, moss and a downpour of refreshing, tea-like violets. There's nothing sharp, overly piney or barbershoppy about this forest. Nor is it a utopia, the soil grounds it and stops it becoming a caricature. It's remarkable, especially given that geosmin was only isolated in 1968.

Just perfect, I'm so happy when I'm wearing this.

A long hike through a damp forest. I am hesitant to say much more than that because of how photo realistic this perfume is.

This is more of a chypre in concept than in practice. While the traditional chypre structure is mostly (bergamot substituted here for mint and fennel) present, it is far from obvious. Much more compelling are the fennel, chestnut, mushroom, and soil tincture. This perfume seems to begin the moment that a torrential storm has ended, and the forest is still recovering and waking up.

Oriza dates this to 1914, which would actually be three years before François Coty’s Chypre originated the genre. I am hesitant to believe the marketing materials here, and even if there was a perfume in 1914 called Chypre Mousse, it was probably a different beast entirely. Still, Chypre Mousse is a trip worth taking. Be sure to wear the right shoes.

First impressions are green, but not in a refreshing way. This is the sere side of the garden: where the flowers are past their best, where the cat goes to play, where last year's compost has created a miasma of dead grass and rotting vegetation. As a keen gardener myself I actually find this strangely attractive, though I expect few others will. To appreciate this fragrance I think you need to be half in love with decay, knowing it is only part of the cycle of life and holds within it the promise of something fresh and new.

In the dry down there are hints of this. Mint, hay, gorse and a dozen other green scents take their turn as I find myself returning to it repeatedly, to sniff out hints of these plants and flowers, alive and dying , growing and fading, emerging from the soil and rotting back down into the soil from which they came.

It's a gardener's fragrance. Gardeners manage decay; they are not inhibited by it. Rather than pressing dead flowers into a book of remembrance, Chypre Mousse is an invitation to scatter the dead grasses and draw out the seedheads and place them where they can dry until they can be replanted next year.

Some lines from Philip Larkin's poem "The Trees" come to mind:

Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

This could work as a winter fragrance - to cheer you up on barren days and remind you of the promise of spring, but to me it only really works as an eccentric example of the perfumer's art.

If you are looking for a potpourri of dried flowers, defiantly asserting the triumph of sweetness over decay (while at the same time capturing the sweetness at the very heart of decay itself), then Chypre Mousse is very much for you.

First I want to say I LOVE this house. But this is such a strange one. I've tried. I put it on again last night and....nope. However, 10 hours later I'm wearing the same sweatshirt and I can smell it on my cuff - gorgeous. The drydown is so lovely. I just can't do the rest of it.

Oh, I so wanted to love one of the many unique fragrances from this wonderful house, Oriza L Legrand. So try as I may, for me the majority of the fragrances are (for whatever reasons) hard passes.

I've searched for a very unique fragrance now for quite some time. I've tried departing from my normal oud-incense-rose-patchouli-earthy-woody-musky-smoky vibe but it's hard to rediscover something I truly love.

And at the risk of offending others, on me Chypre Mousse smells exactly like an unemptied Port-A-Potty on a construction site, or an unclean airport urinal, complete with a nasty deodorizer pod in it...I kid you not.

Pine-Sol, Tidy-Bowl included...it's ammonia, moth balls, urine, mold.

Just awful. Actually gave me a colossal headache. Had to scrub.

Disappointed.

Smells like a crawlspace 6/10

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 "𝘓𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘋𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘶𝘮𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘴."

Greens, cinnamon, sage, rain, and soil. Very interesting, but not for me.

Damp forest been through a rain. The smell of earthy forest floor comes up, hit you in the face right at the opening. The fragrance is green and earthy at the same time, both to an extreme level. Later on the drydown oakmoss join the party. Calming the scent down. I get the feeling of something vintage and luxury at this stage. Definitely a suit up scent. To me this scent is not a polarizing one, but not easy to wear either. But I love this scent.
Performance is very good, 10+ hours and 6 feet projection. Goes down to arm length after about 2 hours. Control your spray, less is more.

Damp and wet newspaper you find deep in the woods from who knows when with mushrooms growing out of it — slightly resembles kitty litter.

I discovered this when I looked at a fragrantica member's fragrances. He had 700 fragrances, and this was in his top 5 with Yatogan, Habit Rouge...
I got a sample from Lucky Scents, and it's really good.
I do get a nice violet with vetiver, and I love the unusual Soil note and mushroom.

It does smell like a lot of moist, mossy, woodsy growth. Yet it's well blended and enjoyable. It's not weird, just has some unique notes.

It reminded me of a discontinued fragrance, "After the Flood", that had soil and mushroom. So I'm glad I can get a bottle of this some day, if I choose.

It reminds me most of several Zoologist fragrances, Sloth or Bat...

Rating: 8/10

God bless. John 3:16

Dense musky undergrowth. If "musky undergrowth" is a foreign concept to you, you have to try Chypre Mousse. Weird in a very weird way. Not a true chypre at all, there is absolutely no contrast between light and darkness here, but all in all the perfect scent to satisfy an irrepressible need for autumnal mood.

Chypre Mousse from Oriza Legrand is an unexpected …honeyed absinthe chypre? It manifests as a yeast-raised donut speckled with pungent, green herbs and burnished with a ladle of lustrous warm sugar glaze made from the honey of hallucinogenic blooms and bitter wormwood extract. Like if you went to the super artisanal donut shop/altered state dispensary and ordered “the green fairy special”. It's intensely sweet in disturbing ways that I can't quite put my finger on, and it's absolutely not for me--but I can definitely appreciate it.

Wow, just wow. I was afraid this would be masculine on me and it is, but only slightly but it is heavy like a masculine perfume but it is decidedly unisex. Its kind of sad, dark, woody with a slight funk with the mushroom smell maybe and overall has a sense of powdery mustiness that's just to die for.

Chypre mousse.
Interesting & unique.
Earthy, brisk, green, minty, resinous, mossy.
A little sweetness here & there.
Very good.

I find the earthy notes are dominant. The soil and mushroom notes here super interesting, both are stronger than the oakmoss and I’m happy about that. I imagine this is what a wet, musty forest would smell like.

If you wear this perfume out in nature your body will become the environment. Wearing this to the office or to happy hour after work? I can’t imagine, though if I smelled it on the right person I would follow them home.

i wanted soooo badly to love this, and totally thought i would based on the notes and reviews but it was just far too heavy?? i honestly didn't get a really good muddy/swamp/forest smell.... it was almost suffocating and overbearing somehow for a green scent. probably my least favorite oriza l. legrand fragrance of the ones i've smelled.

The stuffy moss should be on the edge of the swamp.
Angelica, Fennel, Labdanum.
The only thing I'm not happy with is that this perfume doesn't smell enough chypre. Sharing experience with friends, we all suspect that there are differences between the old and new versions of Chypre Mousse. I smell this and it reminds me of curly ferns. Mixed bittersweet, fluffy lichens and shady, damp caves, with a faint musty smell. Chypre Mousse is salty and cloudy. It was rotting wood and fallen leaves that festered in the dark, engulfed in mud. The overgrown fungus smell, strange for a perfume, but interesting.
I really want a recipe with oakmoss, it would be perfect to remove the grease powder.

I was so ready to love this, but unfortunately to me this smells like depression in a bottle. I smell mushrooms, mud, and rainy clothing left too long on the radiator. I love the artwork and ideas of the brand though, so I definitely will give their other offerings a chance.

So strange and green and ... the opposite of bright? Or brightness through a dusty window - subdued but still bright. It's mysterious and pungent and I love how with this fragrance, while looking at the note breakdown, I can mentally conjure almost every individually-listed olfactory note. But that's not how to enjoy this.

When not focused on the notes, instead I just picture myself in a wet marsh, I've stomped through greens and mud and fungus to get here, and now that scent is wafting up from below. Usually I'm not overjoyed at the smell of mushrooms or wet dirt, but here I've accidentally trod upon fresh mint and sage and licoricey fennel as well, so the resulting chorus is actually bizarre and oddly pleasant. That's what they've captured here. A magical bog. A muddy herbal garden after a very hard rain and now the sun is hitting everything.

This is absolutely unique.

Masterpiece. Green, earthy, when it warms down you can feel a deep breath of sweet underwood... Not my genre, and I love it.

obsessed, definitely on the full bottle wish list. earthy, spicy, woody, green, unusual but comforting. it's good stuff

Definitely Honey note in opening that is not listed !
I was blind sniffed this masterpiece and found a honey and beeswax one of the most dominant notes in opening ,
Then the Marshrooms and earthy notes comes out and all of these are rounded with an absolutely amazing chestnut ( cooked chestnut )
No , it’s not a Gourmand fragrance at all !
It’s a Masterpiece, that is blended from all these absolutely amazing notes !
Greens are there but they are just posing a role of a complimentary notes , absolutely the opposite then someone could believe when seeing the olfactory pyramid.
It is a real Highly Niche Perfumery for trained noses for sure !
I’m in love as with all of Oriza L.Legrand perfumes !

Opens minty, earthy, a little bit wet smelling. A forest floor. Damp ferns, soil for sure, only a light floral now and then, mushrooms, definitely moss... see all those notes up there?? Yes to nearly all of them. Variably. This is really well done and feels more like an experience rather than a fragrance. I'm not sure I'd wear it - it is powerful. I certainly respect it.

The fragrance is warm, opulent and dense.
Honey and minty chocolate, leathery patchouli, tobacco and a strong hay note that reminds me of that in The Afternoon of a Faun by ELdO, except far more bitter. Once the top notes are gone, the similarity to Thundra by Profumum Roma becomes more apparent, with a slightly soapy, musky drydown. It has a sweet, smooth, beeswaxy quality to it, too, that I love.

As a woman who loves a good vintage chypre, I find Chypre Mousse to be entirely masculine and therefore unwearable for myself but I do think this is a phenomenal blend and absolutely gorgeous for a man.

بهترین شیپغ و ترکیب اوکموسی که تا امروز تست کردم
بسیار بسیار عمیق و پیچیده
بسیار کلاسیک و پایبند اصول
اوکموس سبز و خاکی و مخمرگون
یک شاهکار، یک طلای مایع
-----------
Scent & Quality: 10/10
Longevity: 8/10
Sillage: 7/10
Creativity & Uniqueness: 10/10
Affordability: 6/10
-----------
Overall: 8.2 +0.5= 8.7/10

I am so impressed with this fragrance. I am also wondering why its score is not above 4? I have nothing like this in my vast collection. To me, it is a hauntingly beautiful Chypre. As I have gotten older, I appreciate a more vintage style fragrance. Please don’t misunderstand my comment, this has a modern twist but seems so very classic and “elevated”. I imagine fragrance collectors and enthusiasts understand what I am trying to convey. my description is earthy, slightly herbal and unforgettable 😍

Such a classic!
It is really up there with Mousse Illuminee and Tabac Vert but more on the sparkling side, less dry than those.
Love it!

This perfume.. on the right day it’s magical. On the wrong day it smells like the king of all vodka hangovers, that is a different kind of magic all together.

A very old composition, this was originally launched in 1914. Like everything from this house, its of absolutely the highest quality. Their scents always give off a vibe of exclusivity and ...for lack of a better word, intelligence. And like most Oriza l Legrand fragrances there is a strong haunting quality, a sense of deep memory. This is a masterpiece of sorts, I think. I understand many might not find it so wearable, but I think for men, it most certainly is. Its dark but still rather warm. The sense of deep forest soil is very pronounced. The opening is beautiful, rich, damp, with green notes and oakmoss (which carries throughout) and fennel. The violet emerges, and the vetiver. I do think this is a masculine scent. And i suspect it reacts differently on different people. I love it. Its intoxicating, really. But very grounded. The sillage is moderate to good, and the longevity is a bit below average, sadly. If it lasted a bit longer this would rank in top five scents of all time, honestly. The dry down is earthy and you get the mushroom and soil notes, and there is something else at the end I cant quite identify. A work of art.

I am a gourmand lover but, funnily enough, my other perfume love are green fragrances. This is a gorgeous and very unique composition that truly makes you feel like you're taking an stroll in an autumnal forest after the rain. There is one note, though, that takes me slightly out of the experience: fennel. It is very prominent and I really wish it didn't have it. I still like this perfume a lot, but if I could remove the fennel and add some very earthy patchouli this would be my perfect green fragrance.

There's nothing I like more than a great chypre. This is one of the greenest ones I've ever smelled--I could smell the oakmoss as very present from the moment I first sprayed it, but as it settled on my skin I could sense more of the other forest elements, especially the mint (which is wonderful here) and the pine. It's not nearly as big in terms of sillage as either Rogue Perfumery's Chypre-Siam or Ex Nihilo's French Affair, but as an old-fashioned and powerful chypre, it reminded me in certain ways of both--and it's much less expensive than French Affair.

UPDATE 5/6/21: I could NOT stop smelling my sample; and when I had exhausted it, I realized I had to have more, so I broke down and bought a full bottle.

I will wear this for myself if for no one else, because it makes me so, so happy. Since I started getting interested in fragrance, I've been searching and searching for something that evoked a dense, mossy, overgrown forest grotto, and this is absolutely it. I encourage fragrance fans to try this--there is absolutely nothing else like it on the market. I have now tried so many well-made chypres, and I love almost all of them; but this is something really extraordinary.

This is such a strange perfume, but it speaks to me. I think I might just end up with a bottle because -again- I can't stop sniffing. Whether people used to mainstream perfumery are going to appreciate this is another matter. I might just end up wearing this for me alone because it's way too good and interesting. The scent speaks of a place long ago, a dense forest or an overgrown secret garden. There's water there and rocks too. And although it isn't mentioned I also seem to smell honey. The smell of fresh cut hay from fields nearby is in the air as well. All in all it smells like a lost world, the sort of pastoral, foresty dream you see in old paintings. Oriza L Legrand's samplebox is making it difficult for me to choose.

You've walked into a little shop with New Age vibes. There are herbs, roots, handmade oil perfumes, and incenses for sale. That's what this smells like. Earthy, herbal, resinous, evergreen. Several natural elements thrown together in a way that is rustic, not exactly crude but harmonious and a bit random. It is not modern, not necessarily fresh either, but it is familiar and easily identifiable. I don't love it, personally, and this is coming from someone who enjoys realistic herbal notes.

I wasn’t alive in the 70s but this is what I imagine the era smelling like. My mom says it smells like a couch from the late 60s, so... make of that what you will, I guess.

I’m going to be honest with you, this kind of smells like rotten fruit that’s been sitting in the sun with some herbs after a rain. But I love it! I agree with what another reviewer said - I love this smell but I don’t think I want to smell like this. It would be great as a candle or something. I initially tried it because it was said to smell like rain, and I think I can kind of see it?? It’s more like the smell of a garden after a rain on a humid summer day rather than the rain itself.

A very unique scent!! And the bottle is very pretty. If I was gifted this scent, I wouldn’t be mad, but like I said I don’t know that I would spend the money on it! Unless it were a candle or a diffuser oil or something. I’ll have to come back to this one after a while to see if my feelings change.

Bottom line: This is a weird one!! And I love it. But I wouldn’t wear it. I just like to smell it.

Fairy forest. I can't place what I'm smelling at first. It is sweet and delicate, but also smells like a green forest floor.

The style is so refined, like the harmonizing of an orchestra. High quality ingredients (mix of naturals and synthetics). I can't call this vintage, because the feeling I get is magical. I don't usually like to wear "cold" perfumes but this is so beautiful. The light aromatic quality would be refreshing in summer.

As I am sniffing this trying to understand what it, it is clearing my sinuses. The good thing about wearing perfumes with a high percentage of naturals is that you get to enjoy their health benefits.

This is the smell from the very back of C.S. Lewis’ wardrobe, where the musty but glamorous fur coats become pine trees. On first contact I was instantly transported back in time, possibly the Belle Époque, Debussy is discussing Les Chansons de Bilitis with Pierre Louÿs. A scent from a previous incarnation.

I really enjoy smelling this but it’s not something I want to smell like if that makes sense lol it reminds me of a less intense, less dark Dali Homme which is also challenging for me. I get the most intriguing mix of earthy mushroom and dusty hay. Cant stop sniffing it. After a bit, the resins and leather start to become more noticeable and then I think I could maybe love this, we need some more time together for sure. Moderate silage, excellent longevity

My first chypre and I love it. Hard to describe, you just have to experience it. I feel like a fairy in the woods in England when I wear this. Lovely.

A fragrance that is definitely different, albeit not in my opinion as controversial as some others make it out to be.

The list of ingredients in this one is pretty unique, and really I can't say I have tons of experience with quite a few of these notes, so I'll try to explain it as best I can.

Upon spray, you will definitely get a cool, minty smell off the top, which quickly dissipates into what I believe is a mixture (based on notes) of fennel and mushroom, with angelica leering further in the background. Despite note ratings, I do believe violet leaves are on the heavy side here, giving the special, semi-powdery texture violet gives off along with a fresher, crisper bite to it, at least for the first hour or so of the fragrance.

As it dries, it does become far more musty, invoking more of the mushroom texture mingling with the oakmoss (which is pretty much throughout the entirety of this fragrance). Yet still even in this phase you can still get fresh life peeking here and there throughout, most likely referring to the "green shoots" of the fragrance. And far in the distance if you smell closely and deeply, there is touch of something sweet, potentially from the outcome of the "roasted chestnut leather". I also get something reminiscent of cumin, in that kind of spice category, albeit faintly; it might be just from the combination of different notes.

The fragrance very much is about life and death specifically of plants, smelling the almost decay of plants while new life emerges from the decay. I personally don't find it very controversial in terms of smell, and it actually does smell pretty good throughout the fragrance. Sometimes I find myself really smelling it a lot to pick out the intricacies.

And to mention projection/longevity, if this means anything, 30 minutes after I sprayed it in a closed room, my girlfriend who was not in the room asked me what I sprayed, because she was able to smell it even with the door closed. So this can definitely project really hard at the beginning; that includes longevity being fairly long-lasting as well.

I really don't dislike anything about this fragrance, but I don't know if it's something I'd always gravitate towards to a lot, more-so it would be just for me to smell it in the comfort of my home. A meditational scent, if you will, but it does fill a specific niche. (Mind you, I got a free 50ml of this due to buying Horizon, I don't think I'd have spent a lot of money on this otherwise)

A forest minty-ness similar to the veil of "coolness" laying over Goutal's Nuit Etoilee. But the base of this one is a green dusty-sour hay smell that I recognize from Lebreton's Grimoire and L'Eau de Merzhin, and Zoologist's Dodo. It goes to a pithy-powdery classic base (Vol de Nuit, Scherrer, Knowing, Paloma Picasso).

The realistically puffy herbal/vegetable texture of this reminds me also of Via del Profumo's Sensemilla (weird wild gorgeous thing). It's that overwhelming almost funky-stanky pungency you can get after rubbing your hands with oily lavender and field sage and grasses.

Layered and very realistic with facets of all the scents mentioned, plus a high-luxe version of Novaya's Chypre ("Shipr" in fragrantica's database). Crushing herbs and grasses with your hands after having applied your Brylcreem ;P

Contrary to the popular belief amongst the fragrance community that no ferns truly give off a fragrance and its merely a fantasy note, there are species that actually do, such as the Eastern Hayscented Fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula) and the Fragrant Woodfern (Dryopteris fragrans). The woods are my church and I know this truth intimately, walking through ferns along the trails and taking in their ivy-green, coumarinic scent along with the damp earth and the forest canopy. The fern note here captures this incredibly so.

Chypre Mousse may be inaccessible to many out there who like more of a Disney forest with no underbelly, no decay, just all vibrant colors and clean lines delineating sky from tree and tree to plant and plant to ground. The truth is, in the forest, it is inherently, unclean, untidy, a network of mycelium communicating with each other and the trees, an organized chaos to the human mind. This fragrance pays homage to that and few fragrances captivate me like Chypre Mousse.

I love the cornucopia of herbs in the opening; the sweet, pungent fennel contrasting with the fresh sensation of mint, the aromatic clary sage and musky green angelica. In the heart, as we scale the perimeter of the meadows adjacent to the woods, the fields of mature clovers and various wildflowers entering dormancy (the mastic and galbanum seem to provide a valuable contribution to this effect), and we really begin to experience the loam and the humus that anchors all the flora, entering deeper into the forest, deeper into the oceans of scented ferns.

It's worth noting that what is overarching throughout are the oakmoss and the mushrooms (well-rendered here). However, they take center stage after a couple of hours, ever earthy and agrestic. I then discern mildly sweet, meaty chestnut, pine resins, grounding labdanum and vetiver, what bliss, what a dream, lingering into the evening. A moss trace still remains the following morning. Chypre Mousse is a rare feat of complexity and longevity. A resurrected century plus old formula that is truly transcendent in my humble opinion.

I am in love. I feel at home with this one.

10/10

Very interesting to compare this to Manuel Cross's Rogue Mousse Illuminee. Obviously this classic scent is at beginning of the line of historical inspiration for MI. This is a bit less of a mossy agrestic sledgehammer at the opening & is sweeter as the heart reveals itself. And this is very subtle & complicated with a huge amount of different things going on. My sense is that Cross took a few of the central accords of the genre & magnified them for his composition. Anywayz, this is extremely good & I may get a bottle!

4/5
Overall this is a very good composition, I’m considering a full bottle. The drydown on this fragrance is sublime. It’s dry and earthy with hints of resin and incense. The top notes, however, are just ok. Not unpleasant in any way, but nothing to write home about.
It starts out pleasantly green and cool with a touch of sharp herbs. I get the distinct impression of ivy growing on stone walls. It feels shady and overcast. After about 10 minutes the green notes become less prominent as the camphorous mint and fennel join the show. This is actually my least favorite part of the perfume. I get lavender (clary sage?) along with the mint and fennel which gives it a hint of a barber shop feel. It’s pleasantly herbal and green, but nothing special. You’ve smelled this before. This phase lasts about 30 minutes and then the magic happens!

The camphorous notes fade and it’s ferns, ivy(clover?) and undergrowth with a hint of earthiness creeping in. It’s heavenly! It becomes less “fresh” at this stage, not that it was very fresh to begin with. There’s a hint of sharp, spicy floral. Other reviewers have described the earthiness in this scent as loamy and I completely agree. It’s like dirt caked on limestone. Slowly, hints of pine and incensey resins appear and the fragrance has completed it’s final transformation. I would classify this as a forest scent that is focused on the forest floor rather than the soaring trees. Throughout the development there are occasional whiffs of green notes and dry herbs, which give the distinct impression of being in the forest and feeling a cool, refreshing breeze.
It’s a very evocative “forest floor” scent. A bit on the avant-guard side, but still pleasant and wearable. This is a must sample for lovers of earthy, herbal or green scents.

@dosvirus that could be the fennel that you're feeling. Fennel has, like anise, a medicinal licorice-like scent

I wanted so badly to like this- in theory I'm crazy for the way it's described in more positive reviews on here, but something about it just gave me a headache. Maybe it's my skin, maybe it's my sample or the way I applied it, but within a few minutes (maybe under half an hour) of putting it on all I could get was this thick, medicinal and anise sort of scent that just made my head hurt- and that's even more frustrating because I typically love anise. I had to rinse it off, but to its credit it really sticks around. Knowing this, I will try it again and give it some more time- like I said I *want* very much to enjoy this one, but it was a bit overwhelming at first.

I was looking for a very earthy and green perfume to wear on my day hikes. I, as opposed to most scent lovers, wear perfumes for myself and not for others. I like the olfactory stimulation that a perfume can provide. I know it is good for one’s brain to have these kinds of little sensory stimuli, among others.
I search for earthy notes and came across Chypre Mousse. When I saw how much “dislike” it showed on the graph then I knew I had to try it. That is something I’ve learned here: if you are looking for unique scents, pay attention to those who get a lot of dislikes, for that’s a good indication that the perfume in question stands out. Most people like what they are familiar to, in this case meaning perfumes that smell like a hundred others. When they find something different they freak out, and dislike it. Of course this is a generalization, but most of the time it’s true.
I wasn’t wrong. I got a 2ml sample a few days ago and I LOVE IT!
Super earthy, green and sharp. I love to wear this out in the woods on my hikes!
It is just what I was looking for!

Well, this is interesting. Oakmoss and mushroom rule, with some fennel. Wet earth, but not the fresh smell of earth right before or after the rain. This is the dirt under a rotting log in a forest where very little light penetrates the canopy. It’s worth smelling up close and personal because of how unusual it is, but I sure wouldn’t want to smell like this.

I wore this today out with family. We had quite a ways to drive and I kept thinking to myself in the car, "This smells like a man's cologne on me" but didn't say anything. Finally after an hour, I said out loud, "Ok, I can't take this perfume anymore. I've got to scrub it." And two people said "That's YOU?! I thought Dad was wearing that cologne!" They couldn't get over the fact that it was me wearing it because it was so manly. No one was a fan of it and so I proceeded to scrub, but this perfume is very tenacious. I'll give it that.

If you like rolling around on the forest floor, Chypre Mousse is a real treat. It has a bit of a funky fungal thing going on (you could even say it is a bit moldy), which is paired with a loud, buoyant herbal bouquet. Like others have said, this perfume has a wet quality and it shifts in tone and intensity. I would say it has longevity (does not need to be reapplied through the day) and its sillage is in the medium range. This is medicinal. Not really a pharmacy or an alchemist's shop but rather a pagan's dirt floor. Wearing this, you become a spot of earth under the moonlight, a little opening that might be used by some for prayer, fairy calling, and less innocent magics. Those who prefer more classic perfumes might not approve of this kind of hedonism but leave it to us freaks who enjoy it.

there are 1,000 different things going on here: tobacco, mushroom, herbs in vinegar, pine trees, dirt, aromatic bitters, flower sex. Such a mindfuck. It was definitely an experience, but I'm glad it's over. Nature on steroids.

Chypre Mousse deserves its own note category: Loamy. This is not a landscaped field of Spring flowers and herbs at high noon. This is a forest floor at autumn's twilight after a brief but violent thunderstorm.
The noticeably shorter days have silently put us all on notice; dress warmer, start forging, prepare your burrows. I wrap my jacket tighter and quicken my pace; the vista was worth the trek, but my muscles are beginning to rebel. I reach my cabin finally and start my shower. This moment is Chypre Mousse. Herbal/vegetal, oakmoss, vetiver and...damp towel, not quite dried from the last use. Hiding in clear sight amidst the bold brew.
A must try for Chypre lovers. I've not smelled anything like it - so i do not recommend purchasing without sampling first. For vetiver lovers and intrepid wanderers. I do not want to dissect the notes; I just want to enjoy the roaring fire in front of me, and wonder where the next deep, damp forest path will lead me.
Longevity - I'm writing this review after 8 hours from first spray! It is holding strong.
Sillage - Apply more than a dab, and the charm is lost.

Impact
This starts out with a big blast of citronella and eucalyptus, so much so that it’s immediately off putting.
However, that dissipates and turns into one of the most vivid and beautiful summer floral scents. Not sweet, not immediately identifiable as to which flower, but more of an impressionist rendition of sitting outside in the sun, tall grass and flowers, near a body of water. In fact the initial blast of eucalyptus will probably keep the mosquitoes away.
Anyway, it really does get down to not just the flower but the stems, very deep green but not as dark as an aged Vetiver.

Wearability?
The dry down remains similar and strong with appeasing silliage, and projection.
To me, this would make a good rainy day scent, because of the contrast, and is calming to the mind.
Unisex through and through but I think it would be particularly sensual on a female.
On my skin, while the authentic green persists, it dries down with a creamy spice, more in the background, mild, and close to the skin.

Bottom line
Highly wearable, great longevity, and projection.
Not trendy, unique in expression.
Beautiful impression.
Herbaceous, sunshine, with hyper realistic green stem scent.
Very worth it and recommended!

This is a mindblowing masterpiece of niche parfumery, right at first sniff you are beamed into a muddy humid cave in a shadow puppetry scene , where you yourself are dried leather puppet stanced from gun powder edging oakmoss,whose contours highlighted by the velvety galbanum.As the shadow puppeteer (the parfumeur, the inventor of this beast) is moving you with his sticks through the cave where the mushrooms and humid soil on the floor, also puppets cut from clary sage and fern, releiving the damp cool cloud touching your cheeks. The bats made of angelique hang upside down, asleep, dead quiet in chestnut dreams. As you dare to put your steps forward, before the puppeteer thinks of moving you, you crush the clayed rotten dry leaves of autumn and fresh sprouts of fennel beneath your feet and wake the army of sleeping bats, their chestnut wings unlocked. From the first moment of your appearence at the entry of the cave, there is this cool masculin floral cloak,someone(but not the puppetier) put on your shoulders to protect you from the unpredictable end of that dream, that I still couldn't figure out wowen by which filament, violet leaves and clover blossom are on the list, but I am still not convinced, another prairie flower it must be,with a saliva of a cocoon weaving viscosity. Monster longevity with excellent sillage. Thank you the visionary puppeteer from last century, whoever you were, thank you Oriza L.Legrand team for sharing this world heritage with us and making this life so much better by that

Lord, this is some amazing, beautiful stuff: a handful of subtly spicy and aromatic herbs, fresh from a moist, shady garden-- spearmint, fennel, sage, clover, angelica, fern, hay, mushrooms, green galbanum, loamy humus-- all seated on an intoxicating oldschool chypre base (bergamot, patchouly, tonka, cistus labdanum, oakmoss). The ultimate nature lover's green/herbal fragrance. Yet it's not sharp and piercing... it's warm, friendly, autumnal, kitchen-y, soft. So "reassuring", one might say. Such an old recipe-- from WWI -- yet perfectly wearable and dreamy today. Inspiring and soothing. Buy a small sample from Luckyscent, why don'tcha.

One of those scents that grows on you, maddeningly: the first time you smell, you're not sure if you like it at all; five days later and you can't live without it.

The grand dame of chypre fragrances continues to seductively cast its witchy spell over 100 years after it was first introduced. It's raw earthy beauty remains undefinable, mysterious and evocative. It starts off with a fresh herbal whiff of mint, sage, and fennel. As it begins to settle, the prominent oakmoss, galbanum, angelica, fern, clover, and hint of violet are revealed. Finally on complete settling, one can detect notes of oakmoss, vetiver, pine, soil, leather, labdanum, and chestnuts. Herbal, earthy, addictively strange, and yet mesmerizingly haunting, this is not one that will please many. Unisex leaning slightly feminine with moderate sillage/projection and very good longevity. This one is for those folks who don't think beauty comes only from heavy florals or traditional sweet gourmand notes used in perfumery. One for the ages and that has withstood the test of time. Enjoy!

When I sampled chypre mousse some time ago it was all fennel and mushroom and very little of anything else. I sampled it again a few days ago and something has been done to this perfume, or maybe my nose changed, but now I get a lot of mint and wet soil smell in the first 10 minutes in addition to the fennel and mushroom mix. It actually works much better for me. Performance is still big

As a consummate chypre lover, I was most excited to try a generous sample sent by a lovely swapper. At first it is lovely, much like the most vintage, oakmoss laden elixir on earth but in a very short time it evolves into a harsh and oddly earthy concoction that is almost repulsive!
If you are fortunate enough to love it and it works with your chemistry, the upside is that it has the longevity of a Galapagos tortoise!

I don't really understand or connect with this fragrance. Being a huge Chanel 19 fan, I wanted to be able to finally identify the Chypre accord. But this particular one is not for me. I find it too dry, too earthy, and way too oakmossy with no sharp notes. It's not pleasant or unpleasant.. just doesn't really blend with me.

Edit: Turns out this fragrance is perfect for layering with a sweeter scent - seems to have a nice grounding or stabalizing effect to some of the more flighty fragrances. I am starting to really enjoy the blend!!

sweet flowers with cocao in the top; gets drier as it dries down green and fernlike; so complex; soil and mushrooms in the base; I hate chypres but wouldn't classify this as one until the base. The top and middle are lovely. This is earthy to the max. Like digging up growing things and smelling their roots. I put it on at night. In the morning, eight hours later, it was just oakmoss on the skin.

After reading so many positive reviews of this, I have to wonder if I got a bad batch, if my body chemistry is off, or if something is amiss with my sense of smell. This smells straight up bad to me--old ladyish, headache-inducing (and I'm not at all prone to headaches from even the strongest scents,) overwhelmingly herbal bordering on medicinal. All of these qualities were at their worst for the first 2-3 hours after applying. After that, they mellowed into something that could possibly be considered sexy and mysterious by some, but also like rotting vegetation mixed with men's drugstore colognes (kinda neat how it goes from old lady to old man, though!) This scent makes me think of "Grey Gardens" and abandoned houses and desolate fields and crumbling graveyards. Not my thing, not a fan.

YES! This is an earthy, oakmoss, fennel, mushroom dream...very sophisticated...in a gorgeous bottle and box that you'll want to keep on your nightstand...

The disgusted review by the redoubtable odysseusm of Basenotes predisposed me to dislike this fragrance. The words synthetic and plasticine stuck in my mind in particular.

When I sampled it, I could sort of see what he was talking about. However, Chypre Mousse robbed me of my chance to be a forest scent snob. The complexity is really intriguing. For those wondering how much this could be like the 1914 scent, well, to my surprise, I do see a certain relationship to the inaccessibility and multifacetedness of old world perfumes here.

(Oh, and that is another important point to make -- this does smell like a perfume, not like a special effect. That is to say, it is artful and clearly meant, at the end of the day, to delight, although not appeal in a mindless, easily-marketable way. Thus, while foresty, it does NOT smell exactly like a forest. No, I did not find it had a niche vibe -- it has, rather, a classic, vintage vibe.)

This might be a perverse comment to make, but having sampled them side by side, Chypre Mousse bears significant resemblance to Vikt by Slumberhouse. However, it is softer, sweeter, and altogether more refined. Vikt is the goblin springing up at you on the forest path, whereas Chypre Mousse is the fairy beneath the mushroom.

Therefore, for those of you who would like to wear Vikt but cannot for reasons of availability and price, or whose partners are on the verge of murdering them for smelling like a straight up alcoholic gremlin roadside murderer (and I love that about Vikt, just to be clear), I advise testing Chypre Mousse.

This is the most intriguing and fabulous perfume I know of. Humus, mushrooms, decaying logs, ferns, a little mint and fennel. It evokes memories of cool forested areas of the American Northwest or the Japanese countryside.

It changes over time, beautifully. It is collegiate, odd, unforgettable.

Longevity and sillage are both strong. It is unlike anything else--try it!

One very hot and humid summer I had a migraine attack due to the intensive smells from the soli and plants in the forest which is located near where I live. This perfume manages to capture that incident perfectly. Scrubber.

WOW. I've sampled a LOT of perfumes and this one stands out by a mile from the rest. Earthy, real, complex, like walking around barefoot in a forest. Just wow.

Chypre Mousse is one of the outstanding perfumes I've ever owned. I'm about to order my second bottle and I can't believe I've not written a review here. I first tried it after reading Kafkaesque's glorious review, so I sent off for a sample set. Fell in love with CM and continued sampling reviewing and buying other perfume. But I always come back to this. So many fragrances out there today are sweet repeats of each other. I'm on overload of cashmeran woody synthetic vanilla! Gakk!! Hideous! Chypre Mousse is not for everyone.....thank the Lord......but for me it opens with a huge herbal medicinal forest floor of smells. There are few words to describe it but it's very different. It evokes new growth in a woodland, clean whole earthy smells. Ahh that's it! It's our precious EARTH. soil and loam and peate. BUT then it changes and settles and it's as if an exotic flower blooms and fills the earthy air with a scent so rare so beautiful.....like violets but don't expect a sweet sugary violet this is on another level. It's ethereal and powerful all at the same time. It's huge as well so for me on my perfume gobbling skin it's ideal. It last for hours and stays on clothes for days. Glory be!! This perfume is like a journey to a place you never knew existed. Second bottle on its way..........

I adore this scent - it is a cold weather star!! I couldn't imagine trying it at any other time of the year.

My guy says that it smells like honey on me - not my own perception, but everybody to their own.

LOVE

Scent - oak moss, vetiver & pine.

Season/Time of Day - I prefer to use this one in the colder months, day or night.

Projection - I did get noticed, I didn't get a compliment.

Longevity - I get 12hrs consistently.

Oh dear. Someone mixed strong dish soap with a bad copy of Vent Vert, and left it to rot somewhere. It stays like that for 5 hrs, before becoming pleasant...ish. This is one of only 3 samples I've binned, ever. Sorry I was headachy and nauseated :(

This is the weirdest perfume I've ever smelled. I expected to love it, but when my sample arrived I was very disappointed. It smelled like rotting mushrooms! So I put it aside for a few months. I tried it again in the summer and found out the drydown was really lovely, with the oakmoss coming out. But still, it wasn't worth the wait. Now autumn has arrived and I thought Chypre Mousse could finally fit in. And so it was. After the weird opening, which I'm getting used to, I started smelling something so clean and mesmerizing that I couldn't believe it was the same perfume! It seems that Oriza perfumes take me a while to begin to love them, but when it happens it's a big love!

Picture, if you will,a deeply shaded forest. Rotting logs covered with the softest, springiest moss imaginable, the distant sound of a slow running brook. The canopy is so thick, shafts of sunlight pinprick their way through, like the beams of a PAR36 disco light trained on a mirrorball. In these shafts of light, tiny winged insects dart like motes of dust. The forest floor is ripe and fertile with dark composted things which smell at once of geosmin, pine needles and cones, tobacco leaves and a pot of hot black tea. On a bed of angelica, clover leaves and ferns lie two entwined naked bodies in the aftermath of serious bliss, their skin grubby and damp, their eyelids fluttering lanuidly as they try and fail to resist the narcotic scents and brain chemicals of a hot summer's day well done in the undergrowth. This is not a subtle fragrance. This is how chypres are supposed to smell. This is the base of every sexy perfume pre-1975. This is what is missing in today's slew of antiseptically clean candies, fruit salads and OTT blasts of calone. This is what it's all about. To a barefoot in the grass type nature girl like me, this is, if used sparingly, heaven on earth, lasts 4 days on a spill, and is the best thing ever for keeping the cat off my duvet.
As time has gone on (as it inevitably must), I have found that small amounts of Chypre Mousse in the layering process brings other chypres to dazzling life. Do not be afraid to try!

Unique and yet simple.

such a beauty is this scent. it's one of our favorites. classic and modern chypre perfume together. we love wearing this one...

A very harsh, dark green, foresty chypre, far away from any sweetness. Makes no compomises and in that way - only in that way - similar to the fantastic XPEC Original and No. 88. Very well composed, excellent longevity, radiation as a nuclear drive. Beloved by the tarts, by the way.

Over 40 male reviewer:

My first frag from this house, apparently I picked their strangest.

After reading the reviews below, I have a perspective that no one else has offered; that of spiced tea. This is a very nostalgic spiced tea somehow. One of those scents that you know you've smelled before, but can't exactly place. Homey, a cabin out in the woods.

Problem: There is a note/accord in there that has a sort of putrid gig going on; but it's only at the beginning.

The dry-down: Is really. really. great.

I can completely understand people not liking this...

BUT...

...it is also very intriguing, and I can completely understand people LIKING it, and even LOVING it.

IMO, leans masculine but def unisex.

Sillage/Projection/Longevity is all moderate to moderately strong (but not beastly). Certainly is not in the weak category in any of those areas.

The biggest plus: The nostalgic "something" and the "naturalness" of it. I am extremely fussy with frags, and most all designers give me miserable headaches without hardly any effort. I was surprised to see a reviewer below get a headache from this, but I suppose that could happen with virtually any frag.

I PERSONALLY DO NOT GET HARDLY ANY MINT. Yes, I'm yelling. It's there, but it's way in the back, and a very natural plant-type mint which is a huge bonus.

I DO get many of the other notes that can best be summed up as mossy and spicy wet forest.

I will likely never wear it, but am happy to have a 10ml decant that I may use as a spray for certain specific occasions. With frags like these, I will often add them to a discreet location at an outdoor gathering event to add a little wafting surprise for the visitors. This would be the type of frag I would do that with.

It's neat-o.

Since I can't stand about 90% of frags out there, I have to give this an 8 out of 10 (Dior Sauvage for example doesn't even get a "1"), even tho I still will not wear it.

Again, I hate to confess that I haven't a lot of trouble picking out individual notes in ANY PERFUME - let alone one so well blended as this one. But I am in love with this scent!!

A note that wasn't listed was chrysanthemum..... yet, I am strongly reminded of them. They are one of my very favorite scents of fall.

And the longevity of this juice is amazing on me, with my older woman dry skin-eats-perfume. Applied @ 9 PM and still there at 2 PM the next day. So I shall get my money's worth frm the FB I just ordered.

Don't we all need at least one scent that isn't too awfully sweet in our PERFUME cabinets?

I totally agree with all previous reviews. I also love to garden, and this scent reminds me of freshly cut green foliage, mixed with everything else that grows in the soil. The mushroom note is truly prominent; I've stepped on plenty of those thru the years to recognize it. I'm enjoying it, in winter. I wouldn't dare go near it during the summer months. That's when I'm playing in the dirt again, and smell like that anyway ;*)

This is said to date back to 1914, but I highly doubt that whatever was sold under this name back then smelled like the current version. This is a very up to date niche scent to my nose. It's a lot of fun while it lasts, but for me, it is not the intense and strange experience suggested by some reviewers. (Sometimes I think my nose is so used to potent vintage animalics, oakmoss, and musks that modern scents that are said to be STRANGE! WEIRD! STRONG! can seem thin, tame, and pale in comparison.)

As it opens, Chypre Mousse truly suggests moist moss exhalating in a dark forest garden. This is a modern moss note--I don't think it is the same stuff as vintage oakmoss. There's a very unusual. interesting, and slightly acrid note of freshly turned dirt, some soft green notes--vetiver, a little mint, perhaps some artemisia--blended with an aqueous and sweet aromachemical familiar to me from modern men's colognes. I do not perceive a lot of the notes listed--no galbanum, no leather, no labdanum, no pine. As Chypre Mousse dries down, in about an hour, the darker, mossy notes fade away and one is left with a slightly sweet, greenish, aquatic fume. If you reapply Chypre Mousse, it's possible to wallow pleasurably in the damp, dank moss a little longer. If you want more potent oakmoss, you will probably need to switch to something with much more depth, soul, and passion; in other words, a vintage little O.ld L.ady perfume such as Replique, Tweed, or Audace.

Well, I am impressed. Its obviously a savoury mousse from Cyprus and a very tasty one at that. I really love it! Ive been looking for a "green" fragrance and I think Ive found it at last. On the opening its fennel, mint, angelica and clary Sage in that order. There is a little bit of earthiness but nothing off putting. There is sweetness from the honeyed clover that bees love. Its fresh and spring like with the galbanum and clary sage keeping it bright and stimulating.
Im a keen gardener and a very experienced one at that and this is a perfume that any gardener would love. I feel I am transported to my herb garden.
A large sillage and good longevity

I'm on the verge to say I hate Chypre Mousse but don't really want to go that far. However, this is not a perfume that is very easy to like (and it doesn't has to be but I could understand those who strongly dislike it).

Chypre Mousse is very dry. It is very earthy. It is also very insistent. It is like being buried with dry, thick, dark, compact soil, topped with a little bit of hay and tobacco. At the same time, there is something rather moisty and wet going on under there. Maybe some moss or herbs. The green things makes it almost bearable. I think the troubble I have with it is that it makes me feel like I'm laying on a bed of soil that is going to swallow me alive. It is OVERWHELMING and not the way I like it.
It is just too dark and earthy and wet and dry at the same time.


With that said I would still like to smell it on someone else, maybe someone who smell better in it than I do.
Chypre Mousse is after all something I will not forget in the first place and that makes it at least interesting.

This is a little bit of an anti-perfume in the tradition of some of the ELDO, CdG, Slumberhouse or Andy Tauer creations. It has a dark, evocative power to bring to life forests, damp green underground, a bit claustrophobic and deliberately difficult. Everyday on my way to work I walk through a park next to a lake (in the North of England) and depending on the season, I get variations of this from the damp, rotting vegetation, the soil after the rain and the shrubs and trees next to the lake.
It is not a crowd-pleaser and it is quite assertive. I have been rethinking this a few times and this wasn't helped by a couple of reviews by respectable reviewers who don't seem to like it. However, I decided I like it and it is firmly on the shopping list (currently no 8, so won't have by Xmas:-).

This is a joke, right? I swear to god I tried to warm up to Chypre Mousse but I really couldn't. It smells like a mediterranean salad with a chypre-dressing instead of olive oil. I'm all for bizarre, over-the-top fragrances and olfactive experiments but this one smells plain gross, weird and completely unpleasant….and it lasts forever.

Nope.

Rating: 4/10

Oriza's creations seem to harken to the religious experience. I would say that this one makes you suffer for a bit of heaven. The opening note is a bit alarming. Are we being poisoned?

I've noticed that some of the most loved scents make you suffer through some notes that are first difficult to bear. Perhaps that's a part of the appreciation? With time the perfume does relax into something nice.

I don't like to be negative, but this absolutely did not work on my skin. It opened with an overwhelming bitter herbal concoction, and developed with an overlay of a bizarre chemical note. I developed a whopping headache within about 10 minutes of putting it on. Definitely glad it was only a sample!

Mint, earth, sage, fennel, everything. This perfume is incredible and I could simply smell like this forever. Drop dead gorgeous. Aura of an excellent forest green and smells remarkably natural, and it's definitely unusual; I can't put my finger on it, but this (right behind Marescialla, Santa Maria Novella) is one of the creepiest perfumes ever; there's something about it.

Upon putting it on, I get a lot of fennel-anise sort greens. The dry down is WAY different from when I first put it on my wrist. The potency is good. I went to load the laundry into the wash and the entire stack of clothes smelled gracefully like Chypre Mousse, and I used a few drops on my wrist only once a couple days before that. It's subtle yet heavy, and long lasting. It's a strangely addictive, and it's difficult to describe it because it reveals new notes every time I wear it. I'll have to wear it several more times. It's a real shape-shifter.
And based on other reviews, it seems this perfume unfolds differently on everyone.
10/10

Edit 4/15/15: I just got Coven by Andrea Maack, and it's definitely a replication of Chypre Mousse, but it's significantly more pricey. That said, just stick with the original.

This is such an odd perfume, but from the moment I put it on, I felt that I had worn it before . . .and, in one way I had. It reminds me exactly of my herb garden where I let mint and sage grow everywhere. Growing herbs is one of my hobbies, and when they need pruning, I let my Blue & Gold Macaw help. He loves to pick and chop with his enormous beak. He is indiscriminate, and attends to all the plants and even the dirt. There are pine trees around, clover growing in the yard, and all sorts of interesting plants including fennel, chives and ferns. After weeding and cleaning my macaw's beak, I have the loveliest aroma on my hands and clothes. It smells just like Chypre Mousse! In fact the first spray has a potency similar to crushing the leaves under your nose.

The mint and sage are the strongest notes on my skin, and the dry down has its' own peculiar accord. Sillage is moderate, and longevity 3 - 4 hours for me. All of it smells fresh, and as much as I love my garden, this is not a perfume I would wear as a regular selection. However, as I love odd and strange perfumes, I feel that there are times when this would be perfect to wear.

Opening a velvet curtain of rose, vetiver, and mossy woods, without being (too) musty. Somewhere the scent of bread crust. Methinks I'm in a 17th century stone kitchen, with the garden just outside. A masterpiece of olfactory art! Amazing longevity. The drydown becomes quite masculine, so would recommend for men.

Chypre Mousse opens with an unbelievably full, green bouquet. It's like savoring the most complex red wine on the back of the tongue. With each gentle inhalation, my brain tried desperately to grasp the notes, but there were far too many of them tumbling around to pinpoint any one in particular. My thought process went out the window as my eyes closed. All I could think was, "Mmmmm!! Aaahhhhh!!"

The perfume changed so much in the coming moments. Images of my favorite hiking trail flooded vividly through my mind--a cold and clear stream of water that runs alongside a damp trail beneath a canopy of redwoods. Ferns color the shaded slopes bright green. There are definitely mushrooms here and there, but they don't dominate the fragrance. The first phase contains a robust mint note, fungi, leather, ferns, and wet soil. Frodo, have we made it to the shire?

Within minutes I am transported to another part of the trail--the meadow. It can be very dry during summer months with intense sunshine beating down on the golden grasses. Sumptuous notes of hay, tobacco, and honey overtake anything green. Based on the pyramid, these notes aren't supposed to be there, but I do smell them. It was all somehow very familiar. Where had I smelled this before? Clinique's Aromatics Elixir, that very complex and beautiful perfume with its honeyed dryness. But something about AE is jarring. I could never truly love it the way I wanted to. And it smells a bit too stuffy; perhaps outdated. In this phase of Chypre Mousse, it's as though everything wrong with AE was made magically, perfectly RIGHT.

Thirty minutes along, the perfume is more resinous as lentisque presents itself. Although it is certainly unisex, this phase reminds me of 1800's aristocratic London gentlemen with top hats and tails. It's not the forest perfume that it was earlier, and although beautiful, I found myself missing the trees, mushrooms, and soil.

The final drydown, 3-4 hours later smells of lentisque and a hint of cinnamon, and that surprising mushroom note seems to rear its head on occasion, making for an odd scent. Wearing Chypre Mousse is truly an experience.

Heavenly! Captivating! It might not be my signature scent, but there is no doubt that it's a masterpiece and one of the best, most complex perfumes I have ever smelled in my life.

I had my first test of this today. The opening is truly enormous. An almost eye-stinging blast of astringent mint and earth.

This is truly unique, there are notes here that I have no way of identifying; so unusual and unknown to my nose.

It is, however, beautiful in its individuality. Even if I don't know what I'm smelling, it does smell good.

There is a lot of development. As the mint subsides (but doesn't disappear until much later), I sense an anisic or licorice-like tone, and increasing green and brown earthiness. There is a lot more going on that I wish I had the know-how to describe.

A few hours in, the mossiness takes centre stage, and this is bliss.

I know I'll have to try this several times before I really make my mind up about it. I'm sure that I admire it, and has all the hallmarks of my actually craving it, but I'm not sure I'd really wear this. What occasion in this modern world could I even pull this off? I may have to start dancing in forests in the moonlight for just this reason.

I received this yesterday, from Swedish company Fragrance and Art. I don´t usually venture to make blind buys when the perfume is rather costly. But Kafkaesque´s raving review persuaded me.

I´m very glad I took the plunge, so to speak. It opens up cool and minty, and gradually morphes into something with lots of mosses, wetness and mushrooms. I would have liked to smell the violets described by Kafkaesque as well, but never mind, they might show up after I used the fragrance a few times.

I very much appreciate it being a non-linear fragrance. Linear fragrances bore me.

The sillage is - according to my nearest of kin - moderate. The longevity is outstanding. I was very happy to find a lot of Chypre Mousse still lingering about after a full nights sleep. This is unusual for my skin, which tend to "devour" fragrances.

As a seasoned gardener I experienced a very realistic impression of the perfume notes; they were wild fennel, penny royal, asparagus fern and clary sage, but it is the mushroom that is dominant at the outset, the star of the show. It's drenched in a balsamic glaze and cooked in an earth pit, in my country that is a hangi. I imagine the dark caves of France where cheese and truffles are kept and think that Chypre Mousse should have its own vat, it's own region, similar to a wine appellation. Kafkaesque's review (on his/her blog) mentions a chrysanthemum note, a genteel way of identifying the dung note, for it is surely there, just as it is in Tom Ford's Urban Musk, I kid you not.
What is disconcerting to me is that I cannot get past the Lifebuoy soap. (apparently it's violet, but not as we know it) It's as if the thoroughly composted leaf mould, dark and friable, met the truffly mushroom goodness and went, by mistake, into the soap vat instead of the oak barrels reserved for the best Syrah. So, I can't live with the Protex (soap) loitering around the edges of the oak forest where the mycelia of Chypre Mousse call to the distant trampling of the pigs. At full dry down the perfume is full bodied and voluptuous. It's not for me, but a perfume highlight all the same. Unbelievably different and memorable, a wonderful experience.

My sample of Chypre Mousse came in the sample pack efficiently desptached from France to the bottom of the world in a package with a faultlessly handwritten address.

Oh no I cannot be the first reviewer here ! This is unbelievably drop dead stunning. It is like ,dark navy blue chilled night under the glittering stars. Superb quality and persistence - I say this because so much modern fume is just a flash and it's gone,like the zip less @@
Hell this is in the pantheon of beauty that we cannot ignore...
Please excuse the autocorrect I will leave it up to,babel to interpret. This has a stunning unique cold minty open instead,of,the usual,blast,of orange. Presumably they are using the same aromachems as everybody else but hell this is amazing. Absolutely haunting and beautiful...next time I am in Paris I am going there...another Mitsouko...
The ethereal almost medicinal open is extraordinary and never quite leaves. Although not noted this seems to have a blast of patchouli like the blast in Angel that thing that happened all those years ago and upon reflection made me think,that Tuberuese Criminelle,was a pun on Angel.this is a strange and lovely thing.just extraordinary and how rare is that!! I have never smelled anything like this; it is more like aromatherapy than perfume ... Don't worry about making a splash on the opposite sex, this is conquer the universe stuff...futuristic...