Autumn is the perfect time to wear a chypre perfume. Something in a chypre’s mossy, musty base echoes leaf mold and feels right at home on days with cold mornings and sunny afternoons. Among chypres, fruity chypres are especially nice. The fruit adds sweetness and color — so nice on a rainy day — without going all pumpkin spice.
Here are five fruity chypres to sample:
Guerlain Mitsouko: I’ll kick off the list with the queen of fruity chypres…
(Quick PSA: I am on the road today and heading to a place with very limited internet access. I’ll be slow to answer comments or questions all weekend long, but I’ll do my best.)
Fall is not my favorite season, but even I will admit that it’s probably the best time of year for perfume. You can wear just about anything, and for many of us, it’s a joy to finally pull out some of the heavier woods and orientals that we’ve been neglecting all summer. I’ve already done autumn posts covering iris, incense and vetiver, now I’m turning to vanilla (and Angela will join in the fun on Monday, with 5 fruity chypres for fall). As always, these are just my suggestions, and again as always, the line between the seasons is perhaps a bit arbitrary and/or personal: some of these fragrances wear just as well in summer or winter, and some of them work perfectly fine all the year round.
Indult Tihota: Vanilla cake, yes, but vanilla cake from perfumer Francis Kurkdjian…
Where I live, it is the first day of autumn, and this year, September is the new August: after a wet and confusingly mild vacation season1, we look likely to celebrate a glorious Indian Summer. I have always loved the early fall, so I’m tempted, each time I select the autumnal Top 10 at Now Smell This, to stack it with all my favorite chypres, floral ambers and woody orientals. This time, to avoid boring you with repetition, I’ve chosen fragrances released in the last two to three years. I can’t promise there will be any less oakmoss than usual, but I do think I’m fruitier and more craft distilled today…
To give you a thoughtful top ten for fall, I went to the experts: Tracy and André at Fumerie. Both of them used to work at Portland’s Perfume House and amassed years of experience with the classics. Then, seven months ago, Tracy opened Fumerie to focus on niche fragrances, and André joined her.
To give you an idea of their tastes in fragrance, Tracy has a tattoo on her forearm of her favorite perfume notes: patchouli, hay, tobacco, cocoa, and leather. When she thinks of fall, she thinks of comforting scents that remind her of riding her horse as a teenager through the leaves, and the smells of Oregon’s crisp autumn air, sweet alfalfa, saddle leather, grain and the horse itself.
André loves vintage fragrances and has a nose for classically constructed perfumes…
This is the second of my seasonal posts for vetiver (I’ve already done a list for summer), and as always, the line between the seasons is perhaps a bit arbitrary and/or personal: some of these fragrances wear just as well in summer or winter, and some of them work perfectly fine all the year round. But certainly any of the five would work just fine for autumn weather. As always, do add your own picks in the comments…