Coty, Chypre, 'Cyprus', 33 ml. or 1.1 oz. Flacon, Eau de Toilette, Lalique, 1917, 1935, Paris, France ..

François Spoturno, born in 1874, was originally from Corsica, and he studied perfumery with Antoine Chiris in Grasse for one or two years before moving to Paris, adopting a variation on his mother's name, which was 'Coti', and launching his perfume business with La Rose Jacqueminot in 1904.

Thus, in 1904, François Coty founded a fragrance company in Paris that would bear his name for over a century and become probably the most important perfume companies that ever existed. He was determined to revolutionize a fragrance industry that had seen little change during the 19th century. With Coty, he set about reinventing the perfumer’s fragrance palette.

Just five years later, Perfume City was born. A residential villa outside of Paris that was transformed into a grand industrial complex. Over time, Perfume City grew and by 1920, Coty owned and controlled all aspects of his fragrance production, including flower fields, packaging factories, print shops, and delivery vehicles.

Coty understood that to succeed on a larger scale, he needed to reach a wider audience. His strategy was simple .. it was to offer a product of rich appearance, that was still affordable. Coty commissioned artists and manufacturers, such as René Lalique and the Glassworks of Baccarat, to design beauty products packaging imbued with luxurious quality, never previously available to the masses. The strategy worked and perfumes quickly became an international mass-market luxury product almost instantly. In 1912, he opened subsidiaries in New York and London, an important move for the company.

At the end of World War I, soldiers returned home with gifts of French perfume for their loved ones. This led to a demand for Coty products in the U.S. Coty was one of the first to understand the importance of fragrance packaging, and more specifically a beautiful bottle .. "A perfume is seen as much as it is smelled", he said. His business expanded, eventually encompassing cosmetics and powders as well as perfumes, until he was one of the wealthiest men in France.

Coty's Chypre was launched in 1917. It was notoriously the first important and widely known Chypre. Guerlain had produced a chypre as early as 1850 though it was purportedly a much for leathery affair. Chypre is actually one of the world's most ancient perfumery blends and we know this because remains were found in perfume vats during an archeological dig in Cyprus, hence the name chypre, which means cyprus in French. The blend always contains oakmoss and cistus labdanum, a resin from a Meditteranean shrub, and also bergamot.

Once it's been extracted and made into a thick green sticky sludge, the scent of oakmoss is complex. It is woody, musky, and lingering and very slightly salty or smoky. A way of describing it would be twiggy, smoky, and slightly salty like driftwood. It's also haunting, not just a literally earthy scent. Sometimes certain facets evoke distant wood smoke. It smells intriguing and the musky quality means that on skin it exudes its scent in a way that enhances a perfume's sillage, somehow it has an aura of sophistication. The large musk molecules act as a fixative, hence its popularity as a perfume note over thousands of years.

Nowadays a perfume heavy on chypre smells classic, or you might say 'old school', or old fashioned. But certain perfumes are very enhanced with even a small addition. Those smoky, woody, salty, musky notes, in combination with, say, vanilla or amber can take a perfume into new realms.

Francois Coty's Chypre was the chypre that started it all, and was so named as an homage to those scents that perfumed the island of Cyprus which were comprised of a combination of woods, moss and citrus. Henceforth, thanks to this groundbreaking perfume, all perfumes in the chypre category contain some combination of a sparkling citrus note, usually bergamot, some floral heart notes, and then they rest on bases of vetiver, oakmoss, labdanum and patchouli.

Some classic, early scents can be enjoyed only for their historical notoriety, as the first perfumes that open the door for later, superior incarnations. But for perfume lovers, Coty Chypre stands alone as an incredibly beautiful and complex scent. At once fresh and bracing, warm and woodsy, and softly floral, Chypre dries down on the skin into what can only be described as a powdery butter that leaves an almost milky richness, combined with a disquieting hint of civet and musk. It has tremendous longevity on the skin, and even after bathing, I can still detect its exquisitely haunting notes.

Top notes are Bergamot, Neroli, and Orange Blossom
Heart notes are Jasmine, Rose, Lilac, and Orris
Base notes are Vanillin, Coumarin, Oak Moss, Patchouli, Vetiver, Sandalwood, Labdanum, and Styrax

Roja Dove in 'The Essence of Perfume', says of Coty’s Chypre .. “Chypre’s depth is counter-pointed by a vibrant burst of Bergamot which leads into a surprising central theme of Jasmine, Rose and Lilac. Rose in the main harmony is, without question, the dominant note, but dressed up in such a way that it is not cloying. The freshness of the Bergamot, and the dryness of the mosses on which it nestles, make the composition disarming. The floral heart was a new take on ‘ulra-feminity'. The base is a self-assured mixture of Moss and Woods, Gum Resins, and Animal notes. Coty managed to put the gentlest whisper of orris, vanillin, and coumarin into this creation which gave it a note of intimate luxury redolent of the warmth of soft intimacy where the shoulder joins the neck."

If perfumes have messages, moods, and atmospheres, Chypre's is, as Dove suggests, "intimacy." The effect is indeed that you are nuzzling up to someone and smelling the trace of a beautiful fragrance mixed in with their own inimitable scent.."

Offered here is a rare little bottle of this enigmatic perfume in the Eau de Toilette format. In excellent condition, smells wonderful. It comes in its original presentation box. The box has lots of foxing and spots from age. Highly coveted and collectible! Label is a little degraded .. Super rare now ..