MDCI: Chypre Palatin (by Bertrand Duchaufour)

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MDCI scents long remained an enigma to me. Too expensive to even pick them to sniff (... and then, if I love one, I'll have to skip a mortgage payment to buy it?), I would stay away mainly because of the bottle: I've never seen an uglier one. 
I understand and share both the love for Renaissance art and the desire to create something that would evoke it. But I'm Italian, and I see quite a lot of true Renaissance art every day, even just going from home to work. In addition, the scents smell "twentieth century", and a Renaissance cap, IMHO has nothing to do with the fragrances.Yet, if in the end I'll buy the beautiful Chypre Palatin, I'll have to spend for the bottle, too. 
Yes, because my friend Anna (Nyneve) has introduced me to this brand announcing me, in extreme seriousness "These are beautiful, it's a shame you don't know them yet" and so I had no more excuses for not trying them all.

The line as a whole -I'll give you more details in another post- doesn't focus on originality, and aside from a few pleasant dips in present days, most scents are distant or closer relatives of some great classics of the 50s and 60s: the regret for what market was offering few decades ago is clearly perceptible in every fragrance. Parfums MDCI's vision is a wish to take art back into perfumery, and chose to follow this path with the help of some great composers of our era: Patricia De Nicolai (I liked her "Rivage des Syrtes" a lot, and I'll about it), Pierre Bourdon, Francis Kurkdjian, Stephanie Bakouche, Amandine Marie and Jeanne Marie Faugier. And the author of Chypre Palatin, Bertrand Duchaufour, here in one of his best compositions.
Chypre Palatin is a tribute to the great green chypres of the past, beginning with the first Scherrer and Estée Lauder's Collection Privée to end with Chanel N.19. I love chypre fragrances in general, and green chypres make me go bonkers, because they're the epitome of understated -slightly eccentric- sophistication. And CP is no exception.
The fragrance, like any chypre, plays with warm and fresh sensations, with light and shadow: the opening is green and sparkling with hyacinth, citrus, lavender and thyme, which are immediately joined by an accord of velvety flowers: gardenia, rose, jasmine, iris, surrounded by the light of aldehydes and the green roughness of galbanum. After an hour or so, when the flowers gradually leave the party, the fragrance takes a quite animal warmth, very "70s" of benzoin, leather, vanilla, Tolu balsam, costus, oak moss (just a little), whispering a dangerous and irresistible sensuality, inviting others to get closer... only to become a -happy- prey.
Every time I wear it I think of what would happen if Miss Dior and Dioressence (vintage versions, of course) would make love and give birth to a modern progeny.
For me CP is a magnificent perfume, offering an unusually complex structure and a long olfactory journey full of exciting facets. Highly recommended both on womens' and mens' skin!

 ps
And once again kudos to my friend Anna!

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