Pierre Guillaume debuted Collection Croisière at Esxence

Earlier in April this year, the ever-innovative Pierre Guillaume launched the opening salvo in a truly outstanding collection of aquatic themed scents; Entre Ciel et Mer, Paris-Seychelles, Jangala and Long-Courrier. I ended my review for Çafleurebon thus: ‘There is innovation and technology in the exquisite blending and exciting smoothness of the four fragrances, a sense of a perfumer taking graceful and perceptive risks with an often dissed and isolated family of aromas. This is the romance and liquidity of marine and ozonic perfumes explored and opened up for a more discerning and erudite olfactive audience’.

Mojito Chypre Collage The Silver Fox

I was kindly sent a travel set of all four for review purposes but have since bought Paris-Seychelles and Long-Courrier from his Collection Croisiére as it’s important to me to invest in the perfumers and brands I write about. I adore this collection; Pierre’s alchemical skills suit my skin, particularly his sexy vanillic, roasted bedroom gourmands. There is something deeply seductive and close about his Collection Croisière, an emotional ombre de voyage, a sense of returning from overseas, sun-kissed, salt-stained, drunk on tropical fumes, exotic skin, flora and food. Now we have #5 Mojito Chypré, defiantly the most bizarre of the collection so far and despite the cocktail suggestiveness of the name, for me it is a decidedly dark affair, the Lynchian flipside to parties, the undertow of forested menace fermenting beneath the giddy pool parties of Miami or oiled-up Ibiza vacancy. The collision of doll-fun and noble rot is both exhilarating and shocking.

D’été Cocktail. For Vogue Paris June/July 2014. By Thomas Lagrange 

Mojitos were recently voted the UK’s most popular cocktail and the classic Cuban mix of white rum, sugar cane syrup, lime juice, soda and mint leaves is certainly a ubiquitous presence on global mixology listings. Papa Hemingway loved a mojito and he’d probably be a tad taken aback by the hipster permutations that proliferate now. Lychee, Dirty, Kiwi, Frozen, Dark and Strawberry are just a few of the variations of the original recipe. In a pure mojito lime juice is muddled in a highball with the mint leaves, then sugar or cane syrup added, mixed with ice and then topped up with white rum and soda. The garnish is mint leaves. I’ve not a fan, I no longer drink at all, but cocktails have never been my thing, they bore me, they seem a little showoffy and overrated. Mojitos are a summer drink too, a season we don’t see an awful lot in Scotland where binge drinking is considered a national sport at the weekends. But in recent years the influence of mixology on haute perfumery has become more pronounced, wine, whisky, cognac, gin, champagne and cocktail notes have popped up in a number of niche and mainstream launches. In 2012 Frapin’s Speakeasy was a beautiful and sweetly sleazy take on the mojito accord, created by Marc-Antoine Cortichiatto for Creative Director David Froissard.

Jay Z and Beyonce Drunk In Love

Pierre of course has done things very differently. I would expect nothing less from such a modern day olfactory sensualist. He has taken on the chypré as well, a family of olfactive description resonant with scented history, classicism, ruthless structure and controversy concerning the regulatory levels of oakmoss permitted to be used in formulae. Marrying this traditional dry, woody and aloof personality to cocktail fruity frivolity is bold and unconventional. In lesser hands it would have failed, ending up brutally congealed and cut with neon graphic gaudiness.  The two accords, fruity mojito and tailored aromatic mystery entwine and unfold with curious addiction.

A classic chypré structure must contain oakmoss, rose, vetiver, coumarin, labdanum, geranium and patchouli. Without the distinctive mossy woody quality of evernia prunastri, a chypré cannot really in all seriousness be called so. I’m aware of so-called neo-chyprés dotted about here and there, eccentric and in some cases rather lovely formulae – La Panthère by Cartier (2014) & Gucci by Gucci (2007) for example, but to qualify there really must be oakmoss and because of IFRA’s increasingly stringent controls on the raw material, this means the true chypré is virtually extinct. What is happening now however is talented and witty perfumers are using small and allowable amounts with high quality complimentary ingredients such as warm leathery cistus, various permutations of wondrous patchouli and sensual vanilla etc to create a skein of chypré homage and structured vintage fiction allowing a modern generation of perfume lovers to experience a new intelligent and sophisticated chypré hybrid.

Ana Claudia Michels & Mariana Weickert by Mario Testino

Mojito Chypré is one of the best and most intriguing of these I have sampled to date, pungent, ambrosial and aridly green. Pierre has mixed his lime and mint with sparkling aldehydes; vanilla and a ferociously mildewed strawberry note to create an eccentric earthy take on the mojito theme. Poured through these ballsy effervescent notes are the required trace elements of oakmoss, labdanum, vetiver and patchouli required to shape and model the overall chypré ambience. What surprised me was the dryness and deviancy of the aroma; it was not the laid back party scent I had been imagining. I thought perhaps as part of Pierre’s collective assault on aquatics and languorous cruising holiday lifestyle aromatics, it would smell much more zingy, fresh and while not exactly frivolous at least playfully plastic and exhilarating. But it is a sombre scent to my memory, a mix of bubbling syrupy bloody fruits in vintage metal pans, transient Scottish summers picking berries in backbreaking shifts across vast ramshackle strawberry fields that reeked of bitter leaf, pesticide and massacred fruit.

  

Kate Moss Vogue Brazil Mario Testino

It is achingly dry, as great chypré constructions should be, moisture absorbed by mossy, cistus verdancy.  There is madness and challenge in Mojito Chypré’s C16 aldehyde and strawberry furanone blast, bedded down in such forceful tactile greenery. There are flashes of strawberry candy, red liquorice shoelaces, childhood funfair candyfloss, but this plays with deliberate discomfort against the more adult homebrew fruit wine, syrupy liqueur tint of Galliano and most strangely the defiant linger of harvested berries on the turn, the first blossoming of white on the red flesh. Mojito Chypré fascinates me, the use of effects and materials is masterly.  Fruit has grown up, gone dark and parties in woody shadowed places.

 Disclosure  – Bottle of Mojito Chypré kindly provided by Pierre Guillaume, opinions my own

Editor’s Note:  I named Mojito Chypre one of the best scents of Esxcence 2015 especially for those of us who have trouble with Chypres); I met up with a few perfumers who I cannot name and all agreed Mojito Chypre was the best of show.

The Silver Fox, Editor and Author of The Silver Fox

Art Direction: Michelyn Camen, Editor in Chief

Pierre Guillaume Mojito Chypre (photo by Konstatin Subbotin)

 Thanks to Pierre Guillaume we have a 100 ml bottle of Mojito Chypre for a registered ÇaFleureBon reader anywhere in the world.  To be eligible please leave a comment  with what appeals to you about Mojito Chypre, where you live, of course you have a favorite fragrance by Pierre Guillaume… what is it??? Draw closes June 21, 2015

We announce the winners only on site and on our Facebook page, so Like Cafleurebon and use our RSS option…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume.