If you think the title of this post is heralding the death of the classic chypre as a "good" development in our postmodern culture, think again. The fact that few wear these old classics, things like Coty's Chypre, Mitsouko, Antaeus, Grey Flannel (and many others), is very distressing. It signals our cultural decline. That beautiful fragrances based on the timeless beauty of bergamot, labdanum, and oakmoss are pushed aside for nonsense like Neroli Portofino Acqua and Miss Dior "Parfum pour Cheveux" is sad. But I've always believed there's a simple reason for the chypre's grim fate: people just don't like it anymore.
In all my years of discreetly wearing Geoffrey Beene's Grey Flannel, I've noticed I've never received a single compliment on it. For a while I figured it was because people didn't notice it (I try to go light on the Flannel for obvious reasons), but as the years march on, and I continue wearing it day in/day out, the silence from others begins to reflect more than indifference. I've begun to think that most simply don't care for it, at least not enough to say anything to me.
That doesn't mean I care enough to stop wearing it. I love Grey Flannel. I'll always wear it. It's in my current rotation, in several vintages. And it's one of the few vintages that smells gorgeous, even if it has gone a bit flat. I think of it as the only true template for Creed's Green Irish Tweed. With a lick of green apple and real sandalwood, it would probably smell more like GIT than Aspen and Cool Water do. To me, it's a masterpiece. I'll never tire of it.
But even my most prized Jacqueline Cochran vintage Grey Flannel, which smells the most Green Irish Tweedy, fails to elicit a single comment from casual bystanders. GIT recently garnered an impressive "Ooh, that cologne is really beautiful," from a woman not given to such outbursts. Two days later I wore JC Grey Flannel in her close proximity, and got nothing. Zero. Zippo. Zilch. I thought for certain she would at least ask me if it was the same stuff, and maybe even say something about how similar it is, but no. Does this suggest that I'm mistaken in my GF/GIT comparison? Maybe. But still. Come on.
Fast forward to what happened to me today. This morning I showered, dressed, and donned vintage Mitsouko EDP, the one with oakmoss in the base (and lots of it). I drove to work, and arrived early. I sat waiting for others to show up. There are eight co-workers in my department, and they all had the same reaction when they walked in: "What's that smell?"
The sentence "What's that smell" is never, ever to be construed as something positive. When people like how something smells, they say things like, "Oh, that's nice, what is it?" Or, "Mmm, something smells good." But "What's that smell?" Sorry, you have somehow inadvertently fucked up. Perhaps the dosage is wrong. Maybe your skin chemistry and SOTD are having a spat. Or maybe your SOTD just doesn't smell good to anyone but you. In the first two cases, the problem is fixable. Use less scent, or try bathing with a different soap prior to applying your fragrance.
But in the third scenario, you're dealing with a different issue altogether. Your dosage probably doesn't matter, or matters little. And you've bathed adequately. So that whittles it down to the simple fact that people just don't care for your fragrance. In my case today, I was a bit incredulous. It was the first time I'd exposed this group of people to vintage Mitsy. I figured, what the heck. They've tolerated pretty much everything else (mostly fougères and orientals), so why not give my lovely oakmossy decant of this classic Guerlain a spin?
The instant negative feedback was functioning off the fulcrum of two teetering questions: What the fuck smells so bad? and Where is it coming from? I strategically sat closer to my supervisor, who is given to slathering strange skin products on herself, and hoped that this would throw them off the trail. Also in my favor was the presence of a few "off" smells in the building today. But the reactions were pretty visceral.
One man, thirty years of age, said, "I have no idea where it's coming from, but it's pretty bad. It smells like old hotel soap, the shit you're not supposed to use."
Another young woman, twenty-four years old, said, "Yeah, it's almost like that, and the smell of stale urine. Eew."
These comments garnered chuckles from the others, who all agreed. Another woman, thirty-eight, said, "I thought it was my imagination, but yeah, it's kind of weird. Where's it coming from?"
My supervisor, a thirty year-old woman who literally has stress seeping out of her pores on a twenty-four hour basis (her mouth twitches nervously while she's doing something as mundane and snooze-worthy as filing old paperwork away), immediately assumed that the cause of "The Smell" was her recent use of a rather vulgar hand lotion, and began incessantly apologizing for it, even though it was clear that most of my peers did not believe she was the cause of their olfactory distress. I just chuckled along and realized that some of the building's "off" notes were actually a bit worse than I'd realized, which made it that much easier to hide my festering embarrassment.
But I could kind of see their point. If taken wrongly, Mitsouko could be compared to "old soap." Its bone dry "peach" note (I've always felt the fruit idea was overstated in reviews of Mitsouko) combined with the astringent bergamot could certainly make an inexperienced sniffer recoil in fright. Then there's the oakmoss - oh, the oakmoss - which in plain English always smells musty and bitter, even in the loveliest of scents. And the weird, musky, piney, resinous darkness of good labdanum, which in many chypres just translates to an "earthy green" sort of note, isn't representative of today's trends. Not by a long shot.
I'm constantly reading threads and articles that lament the "death of the chypre." These conversations almost always revolve around reformulations of vintage greats, and inevitably the matter of oakmoss gets discussed. Unfortunately, IFRA regulations have strongly recommended that oakmoss and treemoss be used in very small quantities, with the mandate existing for European companies in particular. But in truth, even if the IFRA had minded its business and left oakmoss alone, the note would have died a slow and certain death anyway.
Look at things like Bleu de Chanel and Sauvage. Neither scent relies on oakmoss, yet both are descendents of the classic chypre, especially Bleu. Chanel decided to let the fruity/minty idea play out in a modern interpretation of the "fresh" but "earthy" theme, and the result is something that smells like a fancy deodorant, or perhaps a cheap aftershave. Sauvage got the bergamot part down, and used "earthy" accords to segue into a semi-sweet leather scent. A little labdanum and oakmoss would have put the composition in another league entirely. Sauvage would have smelled incredible. But Dior didn't want that angle. They wanted the Calvin Klein "suede cologne" idea of the last sixteen years.
The kicker is that I've worn reformulated Mitsouko to work on more than one occasion, and though it never elicited compliments, it never generated outright negativity, either. The newer stuff has no oakmoss at all, and thus isn't really a chypre in the technical sense of the term. I wear the old stuff, and what happens? People blanche.
The implications are clear. While by no means a reason to shy away from wearing the classics, our culture has moved away from these dusky, autumnal fragrances. Everyone I work with is under the age of forty. That they all found vintage Mitsouko distressing says something about their taste, sure, but it also says something about the perfume. The reality is that people don't really want to smell these things anymore. They're not interested in catching whiffs of bergamot (actual bitter orange distillate, not the fake shit found in current designer citrus frags), or labdanum, dried fruits, and bitter, acrid, Bavarian Forest oakmoss.
Earthy, woody, citrusy scents are compelling when put through the filter of "Fake." Today's nose wants to smell the idea of bergamot, the vague suggestion of something as oddball as labdanum, and maybe a soapy, semi-sweet analog of moss. Calvin Klein Man is an example of what happens when focus groups do a chypre. Sure, it smells good, and I wear it now and then, but I don't expect it to come close to the quality and uniqueness of an actual chypre.
Instead of "oohs" and "aaahs," vintage Mitsouko generated "Ughs" and "Eews." I know, I know. I live in America. We're a bunch of rubes. We don't know any better. We're one click away from making an orange, wig-wearing narcissist our president. How smart can we be? Maybe we're dumber than dirt, but that really doesn't matter. We still have to coexist. We must still go forth. We can do it the easy way, or the hard way. And unfortunately, wearing vintage Mitsouko means that today's under-forties wrinkle their noses around you. Guess that's not the easiest way forward. Guess it's why things like vintage Mitsouko are going extinct.