Reviews of Chypre Mousse (new) by Oriza L. Legrand

I love this fragrance. This is one of those perfumes that I could see myself wearing as a signature scent, that is, if I believed in that concept. Nevertheless, I find it perfect for my taste - earthy, mossy, woody, expertly blended, smooth, excellent performer, versatile (your mileage may vary), high-quality, and with a mythical flair. It is such a unique perfume, especially for a chypre. There’s nothing quite like it. I could draw a parallel with January Scent’s Burvuvu, not that they smell similar, but both evoke a magical forest, especially the vegetation that decorates the earth and the trees. Or, an old closet with moldy clothes:).

Chypre Mousse stays true to the Chypre family by pairing moss and resins to create that characteristic velvety effect; however, it departs from the classical structure by avoiding the top note clichés, and to my nose, by choosing to implement more of the treemoss (Evernia Furfuracea) as opposed to oakmoss (Evernia Prunastri). This latter observation is important as I find the two materials to be rather distinctive, with Evernia Furfuracea smelling more intensely woody and nutty, compared to Evernia Prunastri. Indeed, I believe the fantasy “chestnut accord” in Chypre Mousse is a result of that. Moreover, I am inclined to suspect it is also how they managed to preserve the formula over the years, since treemoss is not as heavily restricted by IFRA as oakmoss. As previously mentioned, at the top, they opt for an unusual combination of fennel, mushroom, mint, and various greens instead of the classical citrus or fruit. It is invigorating and unique. It makes me think of the forest breeze and, simultaneously, the forest floor, as the mushroom is quite prominent. Speaking of which, the third major element of this fragrance, and perhaps the deal-breaker for many, is the raw earthiness. Here, the name does it justice, as it comes across as an “earthy mousse.” Taking some patchouli, soil, dead vegetation, and mushrooms, further whipping them into a thick mousse-like consistency, topping it with treemoss, and sweetening it with some resins. The mint is served as a side dish. If you think it sounds disgusting, well, I guess it comes down to how much you love earthy scents. To me, it smells delicious. You might also think it could come across as rough and abrasive, in which case, please refer back to the name. Yep, they thought it all through.

Chypre Mousse is the kind of perfume I expect to smell in the artisanal realm, executed with an expert’s skill and experience. Unique, bewitching, and distinctive. Lastly, regarding how it held up over these years (as I am always skeptical of chypres), I am delighted to say that the current iteration smells just as good as the earliest one (and this seems to be the case with all other perfumes from the house). So, as opposed to my initial fears, hunting for a vintage is not mandatory. Oriza L. Legrand offers some exceptional perfumes, value-for-money-wise only rivaled by Parfum D’Empire at this time, and Chypre Mousse is undoubtedly their Tabac Tabou.

IG:@memory.of.scents

This grew on me. I love fragrances like Encre Noire, and figured this would be very dirty/soil-like. I was initially let down by what it wasn't, while still impressed with it's uniqueness. It smelled like a wealthy person's bathroom in the Victorian era. It still smells like that too me, but I've come to appreciate and love every part of this. It opens up with a bracing mint chewing tobacco smell, and smooths out into a posh soapy wild fennel note that takes the lead. This is definitely one to test for yourself. Nothing else smells similar. One thing I've learned along the way is that sometimes a fragrance that is immediately likeable is one that will get boring sooner. In the same way you can't really trust that you'll love a particular fragrance forever, you can't dismiss a challenging fragrance that you may not initially vibe with. Sometimes something that takes a while to understand is usually complex enough to stand the test of time, and becomes a love instead of a like.

I’ll just say for now that this is unlike any other chypre —heck, it’s unlike any other perfume— that I’ve ever put my nose to. I fell for it from the moment I sniffed a 2-ml decant from Luckyscent last September. By the end of the year, I’d gotten a full bottle and it’d become one of my fragrances of all time.

I’ll also say that it’s clearly not for everyone. But if you’re into realistic evocations of nature, and I mean ones that include undergrowth, mycelium, mulch, damp soil, decaying leaves, resinous terpenes, and all the rest, then this might just be up your street, too.

The overarching themes are oakmoss and mushrooms, but the star of the opening is a glorious fennel on a herbaceous bed of mint, angelica, and clary sage. Then for hours upon hours you get a lovely, smooth, earthy, and agrestic vibe that brings forth chestnuts and labdanum and vetiver, all subtended by the oakmoss and the mushrooms. It is an outstanding scent that somehow both remains airy throughout and also lasts forever.

This is what perfumery should be all about: at once an objet d’art and also, in equal measure, an effortlessly wearable delight. Love.

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.

Alchymia. Perfumare. Magnum Opus.

Another very impressive note content and structure with an Oriza L. Legrand perfume!
Only this time, unlike “Horizon”, the end result is more well-rounded and harmonious.

Looking at the earlier reviews, I get a strong feeling that “Chypre Mousse” has been reformulated yet again in the last years. For - and on - me, “Chypre Mousse” remains true to its name as somewhat of a gourmand chypre – a bold and interesting intersection, granted. But too sweet and linear on my skin (much better on paper though). I just can’t get my nose out of the thick layers of syrupy marzipans and minty dark chocolates with this one. I so wish its medicinal and balsamic qualities were more pronounced and earlier so, too. I get a hint of them couple of hours later, but they are too pale, weak and disconnected from the other notes, so the effort is not worth the wait.

And again – a very natural feel to this perfume makes me hold “Chypre Mousse” in high regard. Since this is the second time I encounter both the natural vibe and a very complex note structure, I can only dream of the wonders the original “Chypre Mousse” (and “Horizon”) had to offer.

Overall, a very rich and classy gourmand scent and fairly priced too. Definitely worth checking out if you are into that genre and “Chypre Mousse” performs in a more balanced manner on you, without going too sweet. In fact, it is so good, that it almost converted me.

Oriza L. Legrand, Chypre Mousse (New):
Composition: 8/10
Complexity: 8/10
Development: 6.5/10
Naturality: 7/10

I can't give Chypre Mousse a bad rating as much as I want to. Chypre Mousse has nothing to do with its namesake evoking "Cyprus Moss," an early 20th to mid 20th Century concept pioneered by Coty of woods over sumptuous oakmoss.

The instant fragrance, to me, is a rip off of 70s/80s powerhouse fragrances such as Boss Number One and Givenchy Gentleman. If you enjoy those types of fragrances, then Chypre Mousse will surely be up your alley.

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 Jacques 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.

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.

The underlying sweetness and base of this scent remind me of Fiele's Vetiveria. They both have a very similar earthy-woody aromatic base. The difference lies in the top notes: Chypre Mousse (CM) has a green and slightly minty opening, whereas Vetiveria jumps right into the mid and base with its tonka-vetiver laced with some hay and florals. When I first sprayed this, it reminded me of something, but it took some time to figure out. I'm making this comparison because I thought this fragrance would be unlike anything else I've smelled before, but there is something out there that is very similar. If you want something boozier and a bit more woody, definitely check out Vetiveria by Fiele.

Although earthiness is a major player here, I get more of a mild sweetness that detracts or obstructs the soil note. The sweetness is gentle and addictive, likely due to the resins and labdanum that give it that sweetness. Everything is blended super well and refined.

The longevity is good, and the projection is moderate. It's balanced, so it doesn't lean too heavily into one note. The sweetness can become slightly floral at times. What I don't get is petrichor, so I'm not really reminded of a forest. There are definitely "green" elements, but there isn't enough hay or violet leaves to give it a wet, grassy and soil vibe. Which is a disappointment, but this is still a great scent, and I'm inclined to give it a perfect score.

Green tea ice cream in an old fur coat. Loamy heather, chestnut creme, yellow pistachio paste sculpted in beeswax and slow-melted in winter sun. A bouquet of dried herbs and jasmine. Pollen blanketing an oak forest floor. Mushroom hunting in a vintage nightgown. The Sublime.

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

Such a mysterious and exquisite fragrance. This house goes back to the 1700s, if I'm not mistaken, and although this fragrance has been updated and brought back to the public recently, it still has a very oldschool, organic vibe. I'll do my best to describe this very green chypre:

You have trudged through a bog and you have trampled mushrooms and mosses and your boots are muddy. When you come out of the shallow water, you find a patch of mint and fennel and sage and clover and you start wiping your boots off into that. You realize you are in someone's herb garden, also muddy from the hard rain. Suddenly the sun comes out and starts baking everything under its warmth. You close your eyes and inhale: Chypre Mousse.

This is about as darkly green as it gets. Most pronounced to me are the notes of anise/fennel (i.e. licorice) and mushroom. At first I wince because this is a bizarre combination, not totally pleasant? But as the mint and herbs and sage and other greens come into play, it rounds the fragrance out into something tolerable. As the scent begins to dry down, it becomes something absolutely mysterious and intoxicating. As it settles further, it is actually incredibly pleasant.

Chypre Mousse is a magical swamp. Dark and forboding and wet. But there's a unicorn in here somewhere, you just know it.

Must be experienced.

The name made it sound like it was going to be a Roja Dove confection, but surprise! It is all forest floor, vine, earth, leaf, humus and mineral; the bitter edge of herbs. There's many styles of green-leaning chypres. Chypre Mousse heads in the direction of a Hamlet contemplation - time, death, decay, compost, renewal. And it spends part of its time in a crypt.
So there's a Djedi somber mineralic tinge to it, but lacks Djedi's Guerlainade note, and is more plant-leaning. The Guerlainade note is what gives yearning and hope to Djedi. Those emotions are lacking here - it is more an experience of all those elements playing out in the natural world. The violet leaf works its subtle magic of stillness within change - here the change of natural elements in the cycle of life.
There are many classic Chypre elements here - oakmoss (a bit), clary sage, labdanum, angelica, galbanum, violet leaf, and whatever notes make up the leather. It forgoes citrus and also the florals that were at the heart of most classic chypres - rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, tuberose, etc - embedded jewels gleaming darkly in the heart. The violet leaf seems to fill that position here, but Chypre Mousse comes across as more of an exploration of the rest of the stuff.
Chypre Mousse gets lighter and less somber as it ages. Air starts coming into the humusy notes, and it sort of lifts out of the earth, becoming more tree, resin and wood. A bitter edge remains. I find it a little difficult to dwell in the early part of this fragrance too long while I'm indoors. I have the same difficulty with ‘Sonnet XVII' by Olympic Orchids - I'm compelled by the process of dwelling in the roots and plants, the primal dirt of Sonnet XVII, yet there's something in me that fears it. Very instructional, but a little unnerving.
That being said, I actually don't consider Chypre Mousse an indoor fragrance. It feels at home when you wear it outside, and has a resonance with the air and greenery. It becomes a handsome herbal wood chypre and develops a complexity and character.
I give Chypre Mousse a neutral for indoor use, and a thumbs up for outdoor use. But because it's capable of rising to the occasion I give it an overall thumbs up.

This is amazing! I've used up both a 5 mL decant and a separate 10mL decant, and I'm seriously considering getting a 100mL bottle.

It's a weird scent. It makes me think of a crypt. And decay, and New Orleans. But despite that, it is not a damp scent, it's really dry to my nose. And it smells like a dry crypt in the best possible way. I don't know how to describe what components make up this perfume, but it is unlike anything else I've worn. It is at it's absolute best in very cold weather, think below freezing.

As you can see from other reviews, it is quite a polarizing scent, so I don't recommend a blind buy.

Nothing really new to add...opens and confuses me...get a general olfactory impression of granmas house or walking into an abandoned apothecary with stuff still on the shelves...suddenly , I'm hiking through a dark ancient forest with moss hanging everywhere... My hiking boots scrape the ground as I crush mushrooms and mint...i get an overall impression of that sharp chemical smell of something toxic or poisonous...an interesting experience but not for me...not going on my wishlist...this one goes on the do not buy list...

Chypre Mousse is a little bit of all over the place, almost like the golden retriever of the perfume world. It is soft and gentle at the same time. It can't decide what it wants to be. Throughout the wearing went from damp slightly moldy forest floor to herbaceous new sprouting trees and plants. It does capture that perfect mix when walking through the forest after the rain with patches of wet and bright.

I like it and hate it at the same time.

Another surprising offering by Oriza L. Legrand. These folks know how to make 'em! I detect mint, sage, fennel, and mushroom at the beginning. Green and forest-smell. Deep woods, after a rain, perhaps. But, there is no water note present. It is just moisture saturation. Oakmoss, galbanum, angelica, fern, and clover smother me as though I am laying face down, in the dirt. Dreams and visions of gentle death.

Those smothering depths rise to reveal a puzzling lightness in the base. Labdanum and leather, as if smelled from a short distance. Almost unnerving, this one. Well done.

Very interesting, excellent strong characterful perfume. Mossy fruity green watery aromatic. Some kinship with Davidoff's Cool Water suggests the presence of myrcenyl acetate. You could also make a comparison with Penhaligon's English Fern, though both these masculine fragrances are usually classified as fougeres rather than chypres.

Every scent I've tried so far from Orzia L. Legrand is work. It's an effort to find something to like. Chypre Mousse is another fail for me...just terrible. It does smell like melted plastic as Possum Pie said. I honestly have been trying to like something about one of the scents from this house, but so far it's been virtually pointless. Violets du Czar almost dried into something I could stand wearing, but again, this house is a lot of work. Their scents smell like old, decayed efforts at perfumery from long ago that were discovered in a run down mansion in humid New Orleans. The old decayed and decimated note profiles smell like they'd be right at home on the dried up skin of a zombie. Thumbs down for me.

One of the very few scents about which I vacillate even while I'm wearing it. I can love and hate Chypre Mousse both in the space of 5 minutes' time. Put it on, wash it off, put it back on again. Is it a bag of vegetables liquefied and left rotting in the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, or a druid's magic potion found beneath a giant, spotted toadstool? I can never quite make up my mind. Its dark-green complex strangeness reminds me of Onda, while its odd minerality makes me think of the original L'air de Rien.

Whatever it is, one thing is certain: it is ODD and almost enchanting. And for me, that is good.

I think.

Maybe.

Horrible nasty mothballs naphthalene and melted plastic. There is nothing remotely pleasant. Headache inducing and one of the few frags I've ever had to wash off.

Sadly the intriguing autumnal opening rapidly turns, on my skin, to mint toothpaste, band aids and the powdery bottom of a make up bag. Would plainly be gorgeous on the right person, but a complete disaster with my skin chemistry, alas.

This is amazing and multifaceted. I love it! I first tried it 3years ago and bought a full bottle. I used it all and am now about to buy another. I sample and review many many perfumes and this stands head and shoulders above the generic vanilla cashmere woods.....soft synthetic drydowns and genererally ghastly stuff out there. It opens with strong medicinal sharp herbal notes that startle the senses into wakefulness. It smells expensive and rich and slowly this morphs into an elegant sharp earthy perfume that is tilting masculine but what the hell. The drydown is Glorious!! Its like walking into an expensive perfumery of years gone by with bottles that have glass stoppers that are slightly loose and each giving off a heavenly aroma of opulence and class. Yes that's the word I'm looking for. This is first class, not second or heaven forbid third. This is First Class!! Love it. And I'm a girl!

It's all about that drydown. Damn, it's good!

The opening is a bit like a walk through someone great-aunt's house that is enormous and full of pleasures for the eyes, mouth, and nose, but overwhelms at the same time. The problem is, you have NO idea from which the source of the weird scent comes! You can't escape it...but then...

You find you are trying to breathe it in deeper...and deeper. It's really odd. I get something unpleasant, but then, towards the end of my inhalation, I find something alluring, almost magical. That's just the opening.

The middle notes are traffic-jam of sharp greens - but they are fairly short lived in their fullness and willingness to cut you if you give them any side-eye.

But DAMN! I've been wearing this since 8:30 am, and it's 6:45 pm, and this is the part I LOVE! It's perfectly elegant without announcing itself as such. It's the scent of beauty with edge and a rawness that allows for the wearer to feel real - not as though this is a scent trying to make them pretend at playing a role. It's truly FBW, but only if you have grown bored of "well-blended" and perfect. This is not that bottle. This is an edgier elegance. This is really cool.