Evernia
Ormonde Jayne (2021)

Quiet complexity in the Ormonde Jayne style, the layers of the thing beguile but do not quite gel for my taste. If Evernia’s theme is dry mossy greens, they are immediately offset by peppery spicing which lend them an air of Japanese incense – later this impression will resolve in a dessicated sandalwood note and the ploy begins to make sense. Soon after, a counter-theme of muted florals in a kind of orris crème emerges in a gourmand almost pudding style, the impression of something milky scented with cardamom is difficult to shake off. Then there is a divergent impression of something snappily chemical reminiscent of the dentist’s chair, which thankfully gets lost in the architecture of this perfume after a short while. The settle is dry, smoked and woody – so the Japanese incense theme lives on – but also spiced in a lactonic manner. Make of that what you will; it keeps me alert but gently feathers the pleasure button rather than pressing it.

Right away, you are able to tell that Evernia is quite recognizably an Ormonde Jayne take on oakmoss. By which I mean that the oakmoss has been stripped out, pared down, and framed in an elegantly sparse structure featuring several of the brand’s signatures, for example, the fizzy brightness of cardamom and other ghost spices, a peppery-metallic lift in the topnotes, a touch of freesia or peony in the basenotes for that touch of clean rubber sneaker to push back against any creaminess that edges into excess. And Iso E Super? Sure – this is radiant, musky stuff. But that’s all by the by. Because Evernia never lets us get distracted from the oakmoss.

In Evernia, Ormonde Jayne has highlighted the savory aspects of natural oakmoss rather than its more pungent or bitter facets. Though the two perfumes are ultimately very different, the oakmoss in Evernia reminds me very much of the one used in Guerlain’s Vol de Nuit, in that they both have that soft, earthy ‘slow-cooked greens’ element to them that calls to mind the vapors of celery cooked to the point of collapse, clinging to the fibers of one’s angora sweater in a warm, steamy kitchen. While the Guerlain surrounds its oakmoss with heaps of animalic narcissus, piercing bergamot, and that plush Guerlainade of vanilla and balsams, the Ormonde Jayne emphasizes the vegetal savoriness of its oakmoss with a cardamom-tinged musk so buttery that it feels like vaporized Kerrygold.

I’m almost sure that low-atranol oakmoss has been used here rather than a synthetic replacer, but as Thierry Wasser, Master Perfumer of Guerlain, has pointed out, if “you make a fractional distillation and you pull out what the European Commission doesn’t want any more, then you create an olfactive hole. So then you have to find a way of tricking the nose into thinking that it’s smelling real oakmoss. You have to cheat by using other things”. So perhaps the perfumer has leaned on other materials to fill this ‘hole in Evernia too’, something like jasmone (which often smells like a cross between immortelle and celery to me), or a touch of mastic oil to anchor the greenness and weigh it down. It could even be the same supporting cast as seen in Ormonde Woman (or Man), i.e., that greenish, coniferous mélange of cardamom oil, juniper, and hemlock (though Evernia is far less sweet).

Unlike Ormonde Woman, though, Evernia doesn’t end in a gingerbread amber, nor does it wind up in the scratchy oud-wood place occupied by Ormonde Man (though it clearly belongs fits into the ‘core collection’ of Ormonde Jayne, alongside these stalwarts). Instead, Evernia shakes off the deep, earthy-saline creaminess that dominates for much of its life, and takes on the pale, woody sourness of linen washed in rainwater and hung out to dry in a cold, sharp wind. It is metallic and mineralic, the faint ‘freshly-poured-concrete’ scent of cashmeran whipping it dry. Though I’m personally less enamored by the drydown than I am with the first 75% sprawl of Evernia, I recognize that in its absence of sweet amber, creamy sandalwood, or warming resins, the entire scent maintains this cool, modern spareness throughout that makes it an attractive choice for both sexes.

Evernia shoots out of the gate with a pungent bite of sour bergamot riding along an encompassing cardamom, typically rounded by pick pepper and touched up by coriander that jogs the nose with the familiar Ormonde Jayne Man/Woman DNA till a welcoming twist of innovation arrives in the form of black currant absolute leaking its tangy fruity mead on a fragrant floral heart that is anything but traditionally rosy and merely deepens the powdery spicy verte like a curried carrot top, one that is grounded in a peripheral, hollow coating of the proverbial ‘evernia’, brimming more of woody musk, incense gum and Iso-E-Super than the mossy spell of lore… Collectively, this reeks more of a phantom immortelle streak entering a balsamic santal musk that flavours like premium fizzy celery stalk in A1 sauce, one that is thankfully savoury and alluring. Overall, Evernia is a seance that beckons for the belated spirit of oakmoss rather than a full on lichen possession one hoped it could be or at least allude too. Still, it remains a fine piquant run, ethereal in its green metallic sheen and enjoyable for those who have penchant for camphorous vinaigrette stirs and of Geza Schön’s oeuvre.