Parfums MDCI
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The galbanum strikes first, sharp and resinous, but it's immediately smothered by cistus labdanum's ambered leather and an unexpectedly earthy hyacinth that brings petrichor rather than florals. Thyme and lavender flicker at the edges, aromatic but fleeting, whilst mandarin provides the barest citric brightness before disappearing into the gathering storm.
The plum note emerges with a boozy, fermented quality that mingles with gardenia's creamy facets, creating something between fruit compote and white flowers left overnight in a vase. Iris powder drifts over the composition like dust motes in amber light, whilst the rose and jasmine never quite bloom fully—they remain suggestion rather than statement, held back by that persistent animalic castoreum hum.
What remains is immortelle's curry-maple sweetness locked in embrace with mossy oakmoss, the two creating a golden-brown accord that smells simultaneously of autumn leaves and warm skin. The balsams—benzoin, styrax, tolu—form a resinous cushion beneath, whilst vanilla absolute and leather merge into something that resembles aged book bindings, sensual but intellectual, sweet but never cloying.
Bertrand Duchaufour's Chypre Palatin is a baroque meditation on the chypre structure, one that veers deliberately away from the bright aldehydic thrust of the classics towards something altogether darker and more resinous. The opening announces itself with galbanum's bitter green snap, but this isn't the crisp Vent Vert variety—it's muddied with cistus labdanum's leathery amber and a curious, almost feral hyacinth that smells more of soil than spring gardens. Duchaufour loads the heart with an unlikely collision of plum's winey sweetness against gardenia's creamy indoles and a dusty iris that acts like a veil over the whole composition, softening what might otherwise be too animalic. The castoreum lurks throughout, never dominating but adding a distinct warmth that reads more like aged library leather than anything overtly sexual. What makes this compelling is the immortelle in the base—its strange, maple-syrup sweetness clashing with oakmoss in a way that shouldn't work but does, creating a golden-brown haze over the benzoin and tolu balsam. This is for the fragrance obsessive who's grown tired of safe, pretty chypres and wants something with a bit of teeth. It's too heavy, too strange, too unapologetically itself for casual wear. Save it for autumn evenings when you want to smell like a Symbolist painting—beautiful, but slightly unsettling. The vanilla absolute prevents it from becoming completely austere, but only just.
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4.2/5 (113)