Tristano Onofri Femme

There is a uniquely rustic quality to this obscure chypre from the German-Italian house Tristano Onofri. During a year where boasting and busty florals were all the rage, this seeks to paint a picture of sunlight through reeds rather than illustrate something out of Patrick Nagel's oeuvre. I am greeted with basil and orange blossom from the start, an unlikely but stimulating duo. While white flowers appear here, they are not dominant. On the contrary, they are silhouettes within a cool, dry, green atmosphere. What's most elegant about this is how the base notes reveal themselves. Indeed, one might argue its standard chypre fare: patchouli, labdanum, oakmoss, but something in the way these unfurl here, like a line painting where the changes in hue throughout the lines are ever so gradual. There is an almost leather-with-hay quality to all of them together, further into its dry down, with subtle woody, verdant flashes from earlier in its development still apparent. The structural splendor of its cap is a delicious icing to this rare treat.

One of my favourites...it is very long lasting, very good silage. It is a perfume for a woman with personality . I cannot smell the citrus or the fresh note on me.It is mostly chypre that gives a note of elegance and refinement. Every time I wear it I receive compliments both from men and women.

Tried it... On my skin it changed every 5 min, eventually achieving smell of vintage clothing and basement. Not for me or maybe i just got a bad bottle...

This is quite pleasant. The opening is like a syrupy liqueur, the way so many chypres are.. The opening is greenly bright too, and labelled with a note of basil, but that leafiness isn't culinary, just green. Soon a smooth, .lightly powdery, white floral, chypre appears. A thankfully restrained nuance of patchouli seems to linger at the threshold of perception. The base is strong in both oakmoss and a rather wood-spiced amber. That woody spiciness is not clearly linked to any note listed here on Fragrantica. The bottle is an elegant curiosity too, with a cap like a folded, translucent white sheet. Perhaps it was intended as subtle nod to Estée Lauder's White Linen, ...there is an admittedly inexact similarity between the two. But in direct comparison, the latter is more mossy and honeyed, but less ambery.

What a chypre! Of the best kind, high-class, refined, exquisite! I was surprised, as I hesitated to buy this blind, so I felt like I was resisting a gem. White flowers meet vetyver on a bed of pure, clean leather. The slight bitterness of vetyver makes me think of Balmain de Balmain, a favourite green chypre of mine, while the chypre feeling (by definition) comes from the perfect blend of crisp white flowers with oakmoss, with a perfection of blending similar to that in Suspense by Lancetti. On first application I couldn't recollect why I knew the feeling, but later it came to me: a drier version of this, with a more powerful stress on lemon and leather, even pungent at times, is Cardin's Choc. TO is easily wearable in hot weather, for that matter it is a fresh classy chypre, a gem. Try it at least!

The chypre quality was mostly lost on me here - for me it was more in the direction of a white-floral/green. There is a bunch of cold flowers: very stern and strong. And the green note is something I am not fond of - so I have difficulties to remember the single notes. It wasn't a grass "green" smell.Instead it was more like "woody" green. What I defenitly didn't smell were mandarins, patchouly and moss. In the drydown there was a bit vanilla, but it was only a slight note between the greens and florals... For me the fragrance was too much of a "suit and dress"-fragrance and I didn't much care for it.

I can smell dry, dusty chypre with creamy white florals. It smells rich, elegant and powdery. It's not TOO strong or too floral-y.