The Origins of Chypre - I

Chypre de Coty

My fools for senses,

Our latest adventures lead us in the pursuit of the richest, knottiest, densest and most elusive olfactive family of all. Synonymous with luxury, decadence and megalomania, spanning throughout the history of perfumery, it remains an enigma to this day. It took us time and persistence to trace back its origins, in a journey closer to botany and epigraphy than perfume itself, at the crossroads of the most mythical civilisations of Antiquity. As autumn rises with a smell of humus and fallen leaves, we wanted to explore the depth and width of what is, in more ways than one, an olfactory UFO. Together, let us go back to the Origins...of Chypre.

It would not be untrue to say that the chypre was born in 1917 when François Coty launched his. This perfume, based on a chiaroscuro between the bergamot and the hefty labdanum, patchouli and oakmoss base, all the while shining light on a lustrous floral heart was a true revolution in the world of perfumery, so much so that it became the archetype of an olfactory galaxy wherein gravitate some of the most singular and gigantic perfumes of our era, like Mitsouko by Guerlain, Crêpe de Chine by Millot, Miss Dior by Dior, Aromatics Elixir by Clinique, Femme by Rochas, Bandit by Piguet, Kouros by YSL or Bel Ami by Hermès. These creations all share this game of light and shadows, some leaning towards an animalic abyss, others towards a fruity horizon but each rich, each dense and thick with odorous layers, inspiring perfumers more than a century after the birth of the genre.

Advert for Le Chypre de Coty

Yet, Coty's Chypre was not completely new bur rather seems to have been part of a trend commenced by Guerlain in 1840 with his famous Eau de Chypre and his two others, Cyprisime in 1854 and Chypre de Paris in 1909. Other perfumers will follow his lead: Rimmel in 1880 and his chypre for the Empress of Russia, Roger & Gallet in 1893, Lubin in 1898, Violet in the early twentieth century, Godet in 1908 and Bichara who in 1913 will bring out his Chypre de Limassol. Does this mean that Coty's Chypre was not a precursor but the heir of a lineage? Not quite. What we observe is that Coty redefined the genre of chypre after his own creation thus becoming both the heir of an ancient line of perfumes and the precursor of an innovative one, raising the question of what the pre-Coty chypre was. To obtain some answers, we must first ask ourselves what “chypre” means for in order to know where something comes from, it is necessary to understand the meaning of the word that designates it and two theses are opposed here which we exceptionally shall cover in two articles. The first, which we’ll call geographical, would have “chypre” linked to the island of Cyprus. The other, the botanical, would have “chypre” being derived from “cyperus esculentus”, the Latin name of the scented tigernut.

Today we are going to look at the first thesis although the two are intrinsically linked.

The oldest occurrence of the word "chypre" in French, in relation to perfumery, dates back to the end of the 14th century, when one reads from a room that it is "perfumed with precious aromas of oyseles de Chippre". These “oyseles” -middle-French for bidies- in vogue in the Western courts, were first of all perfume burners, fine works of goldsmithing, of which Cyprus was a capital, had become fashionable in Europe during the Crusades. Cyprus, the limit of the Latin and Eastern worlds, had been a bridge between Europe and the East since its foundation as a Latin kingdom by the Lusignans in the 12th century. It is a point of passage for pilgrims, crusaders, the noble and the poor. It is they who, captivated by a craft combining Gothic and Byzantine influences, brought back some works of art as souvenirs, at a time when the European courts were discovering themselves a taste for the Orient. It therefore became stylish to display Cypriot works in your collection: tapestries, reliquaries, works of goldsmithing amongst which the birdies, small objects intended to contain perfumed pastes and powder that one could either throw into the hearth or let consume as one would nowadays with an incense stick. This new vogue for perfumes – let us remember that only two centuries earlier, the new Byzantine wife of the Doge of Venice was seen as a witch because she fumigated her quarters with perfume- went on at least until the end of the 15th century, as evidenced by the presence of “chypre birdies” in many royal inventories, including those of Queen Charlotte of Savoy and King René.

12th century bird-shaped perfume burner (these were fashionable outside Cyprus)

 As time went by the “chypre birdies” no longer referred to the container but to the contents, i.e. a scented paste made in Cyprus or “in the manner of” Cyprus which was then shaped like a bird and was sometimes covered with feathers. We cannot however affirm, for lack of written evidence,, that there was a specific Cypriot school of perfumery imported to the West, although Félix Fabri in the 15th century described Nicosia as a place where "merchants from all over the world, believers and non-believers alike, gather. They are numerous there, because there arrive the spices from the East and the art of perfumers assembles them”.

The oldest formulae for “oiseaux de chypre” date back, unsurprisingly, to the 15th century and already they show a rather liberal approach to their composition. The oldest, from the city of Le Mans, mentions labdanum, styrax, myrrh, incense, benzoin, mastic and musk whereas the second formula, most likely of a Parisian origin, uses camphor, red and white cedars, labdanum, myrtle, myrrh, tragacanth and arabic gums as well as vinegar to make birdies “in times of epidemic”. No mention is made of the island of Cyprus whatsoever but we can see that beyond their notable differences, these two formulae and our contemporary chypre have in common a base of labdanum.

In 1557, the birdie became a prophylactic against the plague. In 1624, a recipe makes them from labdanum, benzoin, styrax, cloves and, surprisingly, agarwood. At the dawn of the 18th century, the formulae begin to be more elaborate and start using juniper berries, dried flowers, sandalwood, iris, aromatics as well as civet and ambergris. The nobles burned birdies for convenience, the poor could get some styrax and labdanum at a good price but Villeneuve’s discovery of the spirit of wine, marking the beginnings of classical perfumery, would change the history of chypre and by the end of the century, it left the sphere of “dry perfumes” to become an alcohol-based fragrance. In 1771, a recipe for Eau de Chypre gives the following ingredients: jasmine, iris, angelica, nutmeg, roses and a few drops of amber, obviously inspired by the birdie’s formula. Later, in 1777, a commentary claims the Eaux de Chypre to be "amber spirits and (...) fashionable" without much more details and proceeds to give a formula with only ambergris as the sole ingredient. We can see that as years went, we started losing the heart of the chypre and the same way it happened with the Eau de Cologne, Eau de Chypre eventually became a generic name designating a vague olfactory object that we nowadays would call a floral-amber. 

From the 19th century onwards, Europe, and the United Kingdom in particular, became so fond of chypres that dozens of formulae began springing from every apothecary. The first half of the century saw the Eaux de Chypre leaning towards a more floral heart and it wasn’t uncommon to find tuberose, jasmine, rose, cassie, violet and ambrette mixed together. The second half of the century however saw the chypre become less opulent and heavily rely on resins and animalics. In 1857, Septimus Piesse calls the chypre an “old-fashioned” fragrance and gives us the most famous formula at the time based on ambergris, vanilla, iris, musk and rose. Everything leads us to think that the later chypres of Guerlain, Lubin, Rimmel, Bichara and Gallet were influenced by this last formula which will in turn nourish that of Coty’s.

A recipe for an “oiseau de chypre”

 Yet, if it is clear that the presence of labdanum, a floral heart and bergamot in the chypre accord is linked to its very history, what about its other main ingredient: oakmoss?

It owes its presence in the chypre to a powder which existed alongside the birdies and the waters. This “chypre powder” used to perfume wigs or to brighten the skin tone has been used in Europe since at least the 16th century as Parisian and Venetian archives attest to and was solely made of oakmoss. One does not have to look very far to find out the meaning of “chypre” in this instance. It was indeed merely a marketing argument to exoticise a somewhat ordinary powder because “if a buyer would have known that this powder was made from moss (...) he would undoubtedly have preferred the powders made from the flowers known in gardens”. A pirouette Coty himself would have been proud of.

Coty's revolution was to compose a chypre in which all the previous ones were summerised and in which all the following ones would be announced. By introducing oakmoss, he did not become the perpetuator of a tradition but its continuator, taking his predecessors’ vision further to the point of redefining a genre that had been in perpetual motion ever since the 14th century. But if we have been able to trace the origin of chypre as an olfactive family back to the Middle-Ages, what about the word “chypre” itself? Is it simply a reflection of an orientalist trend travelling from court to court over the centuries or is there more to it?

To answer these questions and more, we will have to take you through the botanical thesis, a work we will carry out in the second part of this Overview, at the Origins of Chypre.