Chypre
Photo: Stephan van Helden — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
At a glance
Chypre is a fragrance family built on a bergamot-top, oakmoss-base backbone, giving it a cool, mossy, earthy depth beneath bright citrus.
A sharp contrast between a bright citrus opening — almost always bergamot — and a mossy, earthy base of oakmoss, patchouli, and labdanum. Named after Coty's 1917 Chypre de Coty, itself named for Cyprus. IFRA's allergen restrictions on oakmoss since the early 2000s forced most classic chypres to be rebuilt around substitute materials, changing the character of the whole family.