Oriza L. Legrand Foin Fraîchement Coupé

Source: high-definition-wallpaper.com

Source: high-definition-wallpaper.com

Foin Fraîchement Coupé is a limited edition fragrance from the ancient house of Oriza L. Legrand (hereinafter just “Oriza“). It is a very classical, traditional scent that represents not only Oriza’s ancient roots, but also one of the oldest genres of perfumery: the aromatic fougère. In fact, the fragrance was originally released almost 150 years ago, and its full name is Foin Fraîchement Coupé 1866 (hereinafter just “Foin Fraichement“) to reflect the year of its debut. Yet, this is no powdery, dusty scent taken out of a museum; Foin Fraichement has been re-tweaked for the modern era by Hugo Lambert, the nose behind the new Oriza fragrances and one of the brand’s two co-owners.

Source: Oriza L. Legrand

Source: Oriza L. Legrand

The new Foin Fraichement is an eau de parfum that was released in 2013. On its website, Oriza describes Foin Fraichement and its notes as follows:

1886
New-Mown-Hay

“When you walk in the evening, breathing the smell of new-mown hay, listening to the cuckoo in the woods, watching the stars that spin, your heart, indeed, your heart is purer, more penetrated with  air, light, and the peaceful azure horizon, where the earth touches the sky in a quiet kiss. Oh! like the perfume in the air of a women’s hair! like the skin of their soft hands, as their eyes stare at us and penetrate our soul!” Gustave Flaubert

Top Notes: Angelique, Star Anise & Wild Mint.
Heart Notes: Clover, Sainfoin, New-Mown-Hay & Clary Sage.
Base Notes: Hay , White Musk, cockle & Ivy.

Source: josephsevier.org

Source: josephsevier.org

Foin Fraichement opens on my skin as a strongly green, aromatic cologne with green mint, green angelique, sweet grass, and slightly pungent, dried herbs. The bouquet is heavily infused with clary sage which manifests the plant’s soapy herbaceousness, as well as its lavender facets. The very cologne-like vibe is further underscored by clean musk and a lemony aroma. I don’t know where the latter comes from, but the two together add a clean freshness to go along with the very crisp, bright, green bouquet.

Star Anise. Source: perierga.gr

Star Anise. Source: perierga.gr

Minutes later, the star anise arrives, adding a strong spiciness to the notes. It competes with the lavendery clary sage, and the minty herbal accords for dominance, and somewhat overpowers the more delicate grass tonalities on my skin. The overall effect of the aromatic, spicy, herbal, soapy clean, and slightly lemony notes is a scent that is not only very classic in feel, but rather like a vintage barber-shop fragrance.

Clary sage. Source: dreamstime.com

Clary sage. Source: dreamstime.com

In fact, there are times when Foin Fraichement’s opening bouquet rather resembles Old Spice on my skin. The latter was released in 1937/1938, while the Oriza scent launched about 90 years before, but there are definite similarities. One reason why is the two fragrances have an overlap in notes: star anise, clary sage, lemon, musk, and soapiness. Old Spice is soapier (thanks to the inclusion of aldehydes), has other pungent spices like nutmeg and pimento, and far fewer green notes, but the two fragrances have a definite kinship and similar vibe. The difference for me is that Foin Fraichement feels much more refined, deep, and expensive.

"Golden Hay Bales in Green Fields' by Elena Elisseeva on Fine Art America.

“Golden Hay Bales in Green Fields’ by Elena Elisseeva on Fine Art America.

More importantly, though, the similarities don’t last very long. 20 minutes in, small touches of sweetness and hay rise up from the base, softening some of Foin Fraichement’s aromatic crispness. The perfume is now a very spicy, lightly sweetened blend of star anise, citric freshness, and herbal greenness, all lightly dusted with fresh hay. At the 40-minute mark, Foin Fraichement changes further as its base turns creamy, almost as if some soft woods were included. The clary sage’s soapiness recedes a little, as well.

For the first two hours, many of these changes are one of degree. During that time, Foin Fraichement is a very simple fragrance whose core essence remains unchanged. There are tiny fluctuations in the nature or feel of some of the secondary elements, but, by and large, Foin Fraichement is a very classical aromatic green fragrance in the fougère category with spicy, herbal, green, clean, and hay notes. (If you’re interested, you can read more about the aromatic green subcategory for fougères on Fragrantica.)

Source: hqwallpapers4free.com

Source: hqwallpapers4free.com

Foin Fraichement’s opening bouquet is quite airy and light, but also strong. 2 small sprays created quite a concentrated fragrance that initially hovered 3 inches in projection. Both the sillage and the perfume’s strength slowly soften, however, especially once the creamy base puts an end to the Foin Fraichement’s soapiness. It also helps to diffuse the musk and some of the fragrance’s herbal greenness. At the end of the 2nd hour, Foin Fraichement hovers maybe half an inch above my skin.

The biggest and most noticeable change on my skin is that creaminess to which I keep referring. At times, it feels almost vanillic at times; on other occasions, it is like coumarin and creamy hay. It is thoroughly intertwined with Foin Fraichement’s green side which increasingly takes on vetiver-like tonalities in its grassiness. The mint has faded away, but a faintly powdery touch takes its place. The whole thing is infused with star anise’s spicy sharpness, as well as a delicate sweetness. At the start of the third hour, Foin Fraichement’s main bouquet is of star anise spiciness with green vetiver-like notes, a lingering touch of aromatic herbaceouness, and clean, fresh musk, all atop a creamy coumarin and hay base. It no longer bears any resemblance to Old Spice.

Photo: my own.

Photo: my own.

Foin Fraichement’s drydown stage begins at the start of the 4th hour, and consists primarily of beautiful creaminess with star anise spiciness. There is a flicker of greenness that feels like vetiver, but only light touches of aromatic clary sage and musk remain. Taking their place is what I’d swear was a hefty amount of coumarin. As Fragrantica explains, coumarin consists of:

crystals found in tonka beans and other plants, smelling of almonds, vanilla and freshly-mown hay; found in both fragrances and flavorings, extremely versatile and popular, basis of the fougere family of scents.

Tonka beans. Source:  Fragrance-creation.com

Tonka beans. Source: Fragrance-creation.com

Here, the aroma resembles tonka vanilla, with only infrequent, light undertones of sweet hay. The whole spicy, creamy bouquet is lightly dusted by a tiny amount of powder, but it is generally the sweetened variety, thereby underscoring the coumarin-tonka angle even further.

Foin Fraichement turns into a skin scent on me at the 3.5 hour mark, but the perfume lingers on for a while. In its final moments, Foin Fraichement is a blur of creaminess with a touch of something dry and spicy. All in all, it lasted 7.25 hours on me with 2 sprays.

Foin Fraichement label and logo. Source: Oriza L. Legrand website.

Foin Fraichement label and logo. Source: Oriza L. Legrand website.

Foin Fraichement isn’t a complicated or edgy scent, but then, it’s not meant to be. Fragrances in 1866 weren’t the twisting, morphing creatures that they are today, so one can’t blame Foin Fraichement for its simplicity. Plus, the aromatic fougère category is perhaps the most traditional category of perfumery around. Foin Fraichement comes with those limitations, but it feels like a very refined take on the crisp, green, herbal aromatic genre. It’s also somewhat modern and not wholly vintage in character, as it lacks heavy soapiness or powderiness. In other words, if Foin Fraichement has a retro call-back to the past, it is due primarily to its very traditional genre. Everyone from Guerlain to Profumum Roma makes aromatic fougères, so Foin Fraichement is not old-fashioned so much as classical in nature.

For my personal tastes and style, the fragrance is a little too cologne-like at its start (and you know my personal issues with soapy cleanness), but I found the drydown to be lovely. The mix of star anise and creaminess was wonderful, and so smooth, too. My only real quibble with the fragrance is a small one regarding its moderate longevity, but that may be a question of personal skin chemistry. Foin Fraichement certainly lasted longer on my skin than some of the other scents from the Oriza line.

As a whole, I think Foin Fraichement is a very easy, approachable, good quality, and versatile fragrance. However, it skews into the masculine territory at its start, and I don’t know if some women will find it truly unisex in nature. I suspect it will depend largely on how they feel about herbaceous or aromatic notes like mint, clary sage, and/or lavender, especially all together and in conjunction with star anise.

Foin Fraichement is available on Oriza’s website, and costs €90 for a 100 ml bottle, which is less than the €120 for most of its other siblings. It is also sold at a variety of European retailers, and at a New York boutique called Juju Amuse (see the details section below). Even better, Luckyscent in L.A. just start carrying the full Oriza L. Legrand line (including the lovely soaps and candles) today. It sells Foin Fraichement for $125.

All in all, if you’re looking for a very fresh, spicy aromatic fougère with a refined classicism, you should give Foin Fraichement Coupé a sniff.

Disclosure: Sample courtesy of Oriza L. Legrand. That did not influence this review, I do not do paid reviews, and my opinions are my own.

DETAILS:
Cost & Availability: Foin Fraichement is an eau de parfum that comes in a 100 ml or 3.4 oz bottle, and costs $125 or €90. Foin Fraichement is available directly from Oriza’s e-store. A great sample set is also available from the e-Store (scroll down midway to the page and it’s on the right.) The set includes 7 fragrances in the range, though not Foin Fraîchement Coupé, with each scent coming in 2 ml spray vials. The whole thing costs a low €9. Separate shipping is listed as €9, but a friend said he was charged only €7. Oriza ships globally, as I’ve had readers order the sample set from all over. In the U.S.: Luckyscent now carries the full Oriza L. Legrand line, including Foin Fraichement which it sells for $125 for a 100 ml bottle. Oriza is also carried at New York’s JuJu s’amuse. It has two locations, and I’ve provided the number for one, in case you want to check whether they do phone orders: 100 Thompson Street New York, NY 10012, with Ph: (212) 226.1201; but, also, 1220 Lexington Avenue (at 82nd Street), New York, NY 10018. Other vendors in Europe: Oriza’s perfumes are also sold at Paris’ Marie-Antoinette (which was my favorite perfume shop in Paris), as well as one store in Sweden. In the Netherlands, the Oriza line is carried at ParfuMaria. Germany’s First in Fragrance also carries the Oriza Legrand line, including Foin Fraichement. Oriza L. Legrand is also sold at a few places in Japan. For details on those retailers and the Swedish store, you can check Oriza Points of Sale page.

Perfume Review: Histoires de Parfums 1725 (Casanova)

Lavender fields in Provence.

Lavender fields in Provence.

Famous characters and mythical years, captured in a bottle. The lyrical, olfactory tribute to history is at the heart of Histoires de Parfums, a French niche perfume house founded in 2000 by Gérald Ghislain. As the Histoires de Parfums website explains, each of the early fragrances was entitled just with a date in history, the year in which a legendary figure was born. In the case of “1725,” it was Giacomo Girolamo Casanova who is best known for being a libertine, lover and seducer of women, though he was also much, much more. For example, did you know that some scholars believe Casanova helped write some of the lyrics to Mozart’s Don Giovanni opera, that he translated the mighty Iliad, got into a heated debate over religion with the brilliant Voltaire, or that he was a highly respected political advisor?

Giovanni Casanova via Wikimedia.

Giovanni Casanova via Wikimedia.

I bring up these other attributes because some may think that a perfume dedicated to Casanova would be a mighty oriental, intended to seduce with opulent, sensuous notes — and they would be mistaken. Histoires de Parfums has taken a very different tack with 1725, creating an aromatic fougère with gourmand qualities. The company’s full description for 1725, along with its notes, is as follows:

Venice, the riparian city of love. In that year of 1725 was born the man whose name would symbolize seduction: Giacomo Girolamo Casanova.

1725 Casanova HdP« What is love then? An illness to which man is prone to any age », claimed the one who was one after the other abbot, officer, scholar, writer, banker, con artist, magician, infantryman, spy, diplomat, but always claiming his Venetian origins. For every Casanova, here is an eau de parfum inviting intense pleasure, an amber fern mixing fine wooded tunes and touches of lemony freshness, sublimed by the elegance of lavender. Warmed with heady spices and colored by sweet fruits.

Originality: vanilla lavender combination.

Top Note: Bergamot, Citrus, Grapefruit, Licorice

Heart Note: Lavender, Star Anise

Base Note: Vanilla, Almond, Sandalwood, Cedar, Amber

1725 Casanova doesn’t evoke either the man or sybaritic Venice to me. Instead, I’m taken to modern Provence, perhaps the Luberon before Peter Mayle’s wonderful Year in Provence books made it less of a magical secret. I see vast fields of lavender infused by the aroma of a thousand patisserie shops at its base. They are filled with vanillic almond croissants, pate d’amande, aniseed galettes, and frothy vanilla drinks. Surrounding the lavender fields is a long avenue of cedar trees that create a bridge to the orchards of yellow lemons and zesty yellow grapefruits. The corridor of woody trees is occasionally tinged by smoke but, more frequently, by that wafting scent of vanilla from the patisseries at the bottom of the hill. To me, that is the perfume in a nutshell.

Source: Worldfortravel.com

Source: Worldfortravel.com

1725 Casanova opens on my skin with aromatic herbs and citruses with underlying spices and a quietly muted leather note. The lemon is zesty, fresh, very crisp and similar to the juice in unsweetened lemonade. The grapefruit is similarly yellow and tart. Intermingled with both notes is lavender that feels smooth, not bitter or pungent. A little bit of spicy anise flickers at the edges and, within seconds, is joined by some very exuberant almond atop a light vanilla base.

Croissants aux amandes via foodattitude.fr

Croissants aux amandes via foodattitude.fr http://www.foodattitude.fr/article-croissants-aux-amandes-113855705.html

The almond and vanilla notes are in sharp contrast to the lavender and citrus. The former evokes a French breakfast pastry; the latter, the herbaceous hills of Provence where fields of lavender meet orchards of citrus fruits. The sweetness of the almond-vanilla accord prevents Casanova’s opening from feeling like a primarily masculine fragrance with its typical fougère combination of herbaceous, aromatic citruses and lavender.

Fennel fronds.

Fennel fronds.

Still, the perfume seems almost split into two until, about five minutes in, a bridge is formed between the two camps, thanks to the advent of the cedar note. It’s just barely peppered but, instead, creamy and backed by lightly spiced anise. The latter doesn’t feel like black licorice candy or even dried star anise; instead, it feels more like the fresh green fronds of an anise vegetable or, as Americans call it, fennel. It’s a beautifully delicate, subtle note, especially when mixed with the creamy wood accord, and the two together help to bridge the divide between the other competing groups. But I still found 1725 to be a bit jangly and discordant at the beginning.

Source: Usafilm.info

Source: Usafilm.info

Twenty minutes in, 1725 Casanova turns into a smoky cedar and lavender perfume, with the tiniest dash of citrus and anise notes– all over a vanilla-almond base. The cedar note is beautiful, especially with the lavender — a note that some of you know that I absolutely despise in large quantities. Here, however, it is well done, adding just a subtle aromatic herbaceous quality to the peppered woods while also feeling airily creamy and sweetened. It helps that it’s subtle, creating an overall gauzy haze over the notes, but never smelling like those revoltingly concentrated sachets of dried lavender that were as ubiquitous in the South of France (especially Cannes) as the air you breathed. (If you lived in Cannes, which is right next to Grasse, you were so inundated by lavender sachets, oils, perfumes, creams, bath products, and lavender of every possible formulation, you ended up almost being traumatized. Few places in the South of France are so deluged and bombarded with the note as Cannes which is only about 18 minutes away from the world’s center of perfumery and lavender. So, by the time we escaped to Monte-Carlo, it was too late; I was scarred for life with a searing, deeply rooted, life-long lavender phobia.)

To my surprise, it is actually the vanilla note in 1725 Casanova with which I have greater difficulty. Infused by almond like that in pate d’amande, there is something extremely sickly about it. And, despite its generally light airiness, it feels both cloying and somewhat synthetic. Thankfully, however, about an hour into Casanova’s development, it softens and becomes significantly better. No longer cloying and quite so jangly (for lack of a better term), it mellows out into a much more harmonious note, blending in well with both the marzipan-like almond and the lavender.

Source: Epicurus.com

Source: Epicurus.com

Starting at the 90 minute mark and for the rest of Casanova’s development, the perfume becomes a well-modulated, balanced, almondy-vanilla fragrance that has almost a heliotrope-like quality and which is infused with light, sweetened lavender — all atop a base of smoky wood notes touched fleetingly with softly spiced, herbal anise. It’s not dessert-like or gourmand; 1725 has too much lavender, light smoke and dry woods for that, but it’s also not a truly masculine fougère, either.

1725 remains that way until its very end, never changing in any dramatic way but merely softening until, finally, it is nothing more than a soft vanilla with a touch of lavender over an abstract, woody base tinged with the smallest whisper of smoke. Its sillage was generally moderate at the start, never projecting loudly; this is far too refined a fragrance for volume. Instead, it creates a very small, soft cloud within which the perfume is quite detectable. 1725 Casanova became a skin scent around the fourth hour, remaining there for a number more hours until it finally faded away shortly after the 8 hour mark.

It is surprisingly pretty — even to one who despises lavender. I wore 1725 Casanova to dinner with my parents and, to my surprise, it was a huge hit with the two biggest perfume snobs I know. I don’t know who is more difficult to please: my mother or my father. Almost everything I make them smell is greeted with disdainful silence and a faintly curled lip. Occasionally, there is a single raised eyebrow, a faint shudder, and a horrified comment on the state of modern perfumery. (“Why would anyone want to smell like food??!!) Out of perhaps 50 recent fragrances, I can only remember four or five perfumes receiving enthusiastic approval. Yet, both of them really liked 1725. Frankly, I couldn’t quite believe it. They did disagree somewhat on how powerful a perfume it was: my father thought it was strong; my mother scoffed. And, to my amusement, my mother refused to believe that 1725 Casanova was technically classified as a masculine fragrance. Simply refused. (“That’s a woman’s perfume,” to which my father responded, “Who cares? It smells really good.”)

I agree with both of them. 1725 Casanova is about as unisex as it comes. It’s also an extremely wearable, easy fragrance that would fit a variety of casual situations. I myself wouldn’t go near lavender on any frequent basis (let alone spend actual money on it), but if I think 1725 Casanova is pretty, then those with less violent lavender antipathies may love it.

On Fragrantica, opinions seem split. Half the posters think 1725 Casanova is a charming, lovely, wearable, and even elegantly sophisticated scent; the other half think it’s not hugely interesting, especially as compared to some other Histoires de Parfums perfumes. (The aggressively masculine leather scent, 1740 known as Marquis de Sade, is often mentioned.) Men seem to be more critical, while the few women who have reviewed 1725 seem to like it for themselves. And I think both facts really sum up the perfume: it’s not a very masculine scent, let alone a complicated one. As such, it will fall short with men who prefer the more unusual, and much more obviously masculine, fragrances from the same brand. Yet, there are enough admirers who find it utterly “charming” and timeless to show that it really depends on whether you want something classically elegant or something a little more rakishly adventurous.

One such admirer is the famous perfume critic, Luca Turin, who categorizes 1725 Casanova as an “Anisic Lavender” and gave it a Four Star review in Perfumes: The A-Z Guide:

Anisic notes are hard to handle in perfumery: they are sweetly happy on their own (few things smell better than star anise in a bag) but usually stand out in ensemble playing as a pan flute would in a string quartet. This clever fragrance associates two such notes, licorice and star anise, to a lavender-citrus structure and somehow clips the whole thing together with a touch of heliotropin and cedarwood. Top and heart are wonderfully melodious, and the drydown comes close enough to L’Heure Bleue to feel its gravitational pull, but then escapes again. Very good.

My experience wasn’t identical to his, especially as I never detected a strongly black licorice note and the anise one was much more like soft fennel than truly spicy, almost bitterish, woody, very pungent, dried star anise. That said, I can see why he would compare 1725’s drydown to L’Heure Bleue, and I do think it’s a good fragrance — even with the lavender.

As a final note, a huge number of people on Fragrantica seem to think 1725 Casanova resembles MDCI‘s Invasion Barbare. I haven’t tried or reviewed the latter, so I can’t comment, but 33 people voted on the similarity on each perfume’s page. A few noted subtle differences, such as one commentator who said that Casanova was similar but “with the violet removed and the notes toned down and refined.” All I can tell you is that 1725 is significantly cheaper than the MDCI fragrance: a 2 oz/60 ml bottle of Casanova costs $125, while the exact same size for Invasion Barbare costs $250.

In short, if you like anise and lavender, then I’d definitely recommend giving 1725 a sniff.

DETAILS:
Cost, Availability, Decant Sets & Samples: 1725 Casanova is an Eau de Parfum that comes in two sizes: 2.0 oz/60 ml for $125 or €145; or 4 oz/120 ml for $205. (Further decant or mini-sized options are below). Both full bottle sizes are available on the Histoires de Parfums website, which also has a fantastic sample program (6 samples of your choice) whose $20 price goes towards the purchase of a large 4 oz. bottle. Further details are available here as to how the process works. Shipping is free for all orders anywhere in the world for purchases over $130; below that, there is a $10 shipping fee. In the U.S., 1725 Casanova is available from Luckyscent in both sizes, along with samples. BeautyHabit has not only the 2 bottles but also a 14 ml decant for $36. The perfume is also found on Amazon in the smaller $125 size. The Perfume Shoppe (which has a Canadian division) sells 14 ml decants of 1725 for $36. Another option may be from Beauty Cafe which sells a 3 Bottle Nomad Kit of any 3 HdP fragrances in 14 ml bottles for $96. Outside the U.S.: In the UK, you can find it at Roullier White for GBP £125 for the smaller 2 oz/60 ml bottle. For the rest of Europe, you can find it at First in Fragrance for €145 for the 2 oz bottle. In Australia, you can find it on sale at City Perfume for AUD$179 for 2.0/60 ml oz or at the full AUD$190 price at Peony Melbourne. For all other countries, Histoires de Parfums vast Store Locator lists retailers from South Africa to the Netherlands, Sweden and Kuwait. Samples: You can find samples at a number of the retailers linked to above. Surrender to Chance has a variety of different options and sizes for 1725 Casanova, from samples to decants. Samples begin at $4.99 for a 1 ml vial.