MDCI
Chypre Palatin
The Story
Chypre Palatin is Bertrand Duchaufour writing a chypre at Renaissance scale, the register MDCI takes from Catherine de' Medici's palaces and the Uffizi. It is built for volume rather than restraint, which is unusual for a form that normally depends on dryness.
Amber
Resin warmed until it goes sweet
Labdanum, benzoin and vanilla melted together into something sweet but dusky, like tree sap gone soft in the sun with a thread of incense smoke through it. Amber does not sparkle or shout. It sits close to the skin and gives off heat for hours.
Leather
A jacket with some miles on it
Tanned hide and birch tar, dry, smoky, a bitter rasp and tobacco under it. Sometimes new and lacquered, like a car interior; sometimes worn soft, like suede gloves gone thin. Either way, it smells used.
Sweet
Warm sugar you cannot quite name
Caramel, honey, spun sugar: sweetness that hovers between all three and never settles on one. This is the gourmand pull, the thing that makes someone lean in closer than they meant to, warm and soft and a half step short of edible.
Warm Spicy
Glowing embers of the spice drawer
The rounded heat of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg, dry and slightly resinous, like a baking pantry rather than a sharp kitchen. It creates a flushed, enveloping warmth that feels intimate and cool-weather, hugging the skin from within.
Green
Sap on your hands after weeding
Snap a stem and this is what comes off: sappy, cool, a little bitter, more vegetable than floral. Cut grass, bruised leaves, the inside of a hedge after the shears. Nothing here is sweet.
Powdery
Soft hush of dressed skin
A velvety, slightly dry softness of iris root, violet, and fine talc, like face powder or clean linen warmed by skin. It feels intimate, refined, and nostalgic, blurring a fragrance into a gentle, cushioned haze.
Galbanum
Green so bitter it borders on turpentine
What it is
A gum that bleeds out of cuts in the stems and roots of a giant fennel from Iran and Central Asia. Once hardened, it is steam-distilled to an oil or pulled into a dark, thick brown absolute.
How it smells
Bitter, sharp and aggressively green, a fistful of snapped stems with a turpentine edge. Underneath sits something musky and almost balsamic. At a trace rather than a dose it turns cool and dewy, more garden than assault.
In perfumery
One of the few natural green base notes, used as a fixative and as the opening signature of the green chypre. It sits with oakmoss, iris, hyacinth and neroli, and has been overdosed on purpose more than once.
Good to know
The Book of Exodus names it, as an ingredient of the sacred temple incense. Iran still supplies most of the gum, thousands of years later.
Aldehydes
Sparkling waxy lift that built modern perfume
What it is
Blow out a candle: that waxy smell is this family of molecules. Perfumery uses the fatty ones, carbon chains sorted by length. First found in rose oil and citrus zest, they are now made in a lab.
How it smells
Bright, abstract, effervescent. Waxy and soapy with a metallic edge, somewhere between clean laundry, a hot iron and orange peel. They flash hard on top, then lift everything underneath into the air.
In perfumery
Used in tiny doses at the very top, where they add radiance and volume above a floral heart. C-10, C-11 and C-12 make the classic trio, and the snowy sparkle they make founded an entire family of perfumes.
Good to know
Their fame is partly an accident. A perfumer is said to have overdosed the aldehydes in a 1921 trial, and the client picked that very sample. A whole style of perfumery came out of a mistake nobody corrected.
Labdanum
Sticky amber resin scraped from sun-baked rockrose
What it is
A Mediterranean rockrose sweats gum through its leaves in summer, dark and sticky enough to glue your fingers together. Harvesters boil or scrape the branches to get it off, then extract that crude gum into absolute and resinoid.
How it smells
Balsamic warmth, then leather, dried fruit, honey and a curl of smoke. There is something almost ambergris-like in the opening. Hours later it has settled into brown tobacco and worn skin, still going.
In perfumery
Take labdanum out and most amber accords collapse; it is what vanilla and benzoin get built on. It fixes a formula in place, gives chypres and leathers their depth, and sits well with rose, oakmoss and incense.
Good to know
Before there was distillation, there were goats. Herds browsed through cistus scrub all summer, the gum matted into their beards and thighs, and shepherds combed it out. Labdanum is one of the oldest aromatic materials still in use.
Clementine
Sweet winter citrus that peels in seconds
What it is
A mandarin crossed with a sweet orange, near-seedless, ripening in the middle of winter around the Mediterranean and North Africa. The oil is cold-pressed from that thin rind, the one that comes away in a single piece.
How it smells
Juicy and rounded, without the sharpness of lemon or the bite of orange. The peel oil is candied and tangy, almost floral, with a thread of bitterness at the edge that keeps it from going syrupy.
In perfumery
A top note that opens friendly rather than bracing. Softer than bergamot, it suits gourmands and cosy winter blends, sitting easily with vanilla, ginger, neroli and other citrus, and giving the first minutes an edible glow.
Good to know
The fruit is an accident. A French missionary brother, Clément Rodier, found the seedling in an orphanage garden in Algeria and grafted it, and the fruit took his name. Ripening in midwinter made it the Christmas-stocking citrus.
Hyacinth
Cold spring blooms, green honeyed and narcotic
What it is
A dense spring spike of bells, Dutch-grown by the field, whose true absolute, solvent-extracted from fresh blooms, is so rare and costly that nearly every hyacinth in perfumery is a reconstruction.
How it smells
Green before it is floral: cold, leafy, watery, with a sharp honeyed sweetness cutting through and something narcotic underneath. There is soil in it too, and bulb. Crisp and sappy at first, then soft and indolic.
In perfumery
In the heart it gives green florals their volume and lift, working with galbanum, narcissus, rose and violet leaf. It supplies the cool, dewy texture of an early-spring garden just after rain.
Good to know
One molecule does almost all the work. Phenylacetaldehyde makes up barely one percent of the absolute, yet the nose catches it at vanishingly small amounts, which is why a laboratory version of it can pass for the flower.
Lavender
Cool herbal blue from a sunlit hillside
What it is
The flowering tops are cut at peak bloom and go straight to the still, the purple spikes giving up a pale oil. Solvent extraction yields a darker absolute instead. Provence and Bulgaria supply most of it.
How it smells
Sharp and green at first, almost minty, with a cool camphor lift over soft floral sweetness. The dry-down warms into hay, faint vanilla and a powdery calm. True lavender is rounder and sweeter than the lavandin hybrid.
In perfumery
Set it against oakmoss, coumarin and tonka and you have a fougere, the barbershop structure behind countless aromatic masculines. Lavender runs from the top into the heart, cooling bright florals and softening citrus colognes.
Good to know
Those Provence fields the tourists photograph are mostly lavandin, a sterile hybrid that yields far more oil per hectare. True lavender is retreating uphill: a bacterial disease carried by sap-sucking insects has pushed plantings to cooler altitudes.
Thyme
Sun-warmed scrub herb, bracing or oddly sweet
What it is
A knee-high woody shrub of the mint family, wild over dry Mediterranean hillsides and farmed from southern France to North Africa. The flowering tops are steam-distilled, usually after partial drying, into an oil loaded with phenols.
How it smells
Green and intensely herbal, and at its sharpest more medicine cabinet than kitchen, with a warm camphorous edge behind the bite. Dry and peppery first, then a softer woody warmth, the smell of scrub baking at noon.
In perfumery
A top-to-heart lift that keeps a formula from going soft. Thyme sharpens fougeres and aromatic chypres beside lavender, rosemary and oakmoss, and gives barbershop compositions their clean herbal snap.
Good to know
Thyme comes in chemotypes: plants that look identical but are born to make different oils, with altitude and climate deciding which takes over a hillside. Thymol thyme is the medicinal one. Wild hill thyme leans linalool, softer and sweeter.
Plum
Stewed dark fruit, wine-sweet and never juicy
What it is
Peach comes from lactones, apple from esters. Plum comes from damascones, honeyed and wine-like, which is why it reads dark rather than juicy. No plum oil exists; davana and osmanthus carry the same molecules for a botanical build.
How it smells
The lab build is jammy, a little candied, bright and steady from top to base. The botanical one runs darker: fruit slow-cooked and left to cool, the sweetness pulling back as a dried-fruit edge surfaces late.
In perfumery
Rose, patchouli, woods and amber all take it well, and it slots into gourmands and chypres without turning either one sugary. Where peach lifts a composition, plum weighs it down. More velvet than juice.
Good to know
A trace of damascenone does the work; much more takes over the formula. Davana is the same. Osmanthus is one of the few naturals that smells of stone fruit on its own, and a flower absolute at that.
Rose
Dewy sweetness over a green, peppery bite
What it is
Most perfumery rose is one of two: damascena from Bulgaria and Turkey, centifolia from Grasse. Whole blossoms are picked by hand from before sunrise until about ten thirty, then distilled into otto or solvent-extracted into absolute.
How it smells
Fresh, honeyed, green at the edges, with something dewy still on it. Spice and fruit sit underneath, and in the absolute a jammy darkness. Otto opens crisp and bright; absolute is warmer, smokier, closer to skin.
In perfumery
Rose behaves less like one note than a whole palette. It carries a perfume alone or vanishes into a chypre, turns dark against oud and patchouli, goes powdery beside violet, and holds a floral heart together.
Good to know
The two extractions are not the same bargain. Otto takes three to four thousand kilograms of blossoms to yield one kilogram of oil. Absolute, pulled out with solvent, gets there on roughly a seventh of the flowers.
Iris
Cool powdered earth from a patiently aged root
What it is
Perfumery iris comes not from the flower but from the root. The dug rhizomes are dried and left to age three to five years while the aromatic irones form, then ground and steam-distilled into a waxy orris butter.
How it smells
Cool, powdery and rooty: violet, suede and fresh-sawn wood dusted with face powder. Underneath sits a damp mineral earthiness, a faint carrot sweetness, a buttery softness. It feels more texture than perfume, and it stays quiet on skin.
In perfumery
Nothing else gives a blend that cool, powdered restraint. It steadies chypres and florals, takes the shine off rose and violet, and lends sandalwood and ambrette a velvet finish. Iris makes a perfume behave.
Good to know
A tonne of dried, aged rhizome yields about two kilograms of butter. Add the years of waiting before it can even be distilled and you see why real orris turns up in so few bottles.
Jasmine
The heady white flower at perfumery's beating heart
What it is
Picking runs by hand in the dark, from before first light into the morning. The blossoms are too fragile to distill, so solvent lifts their oil into a waxy concrete, and alcohol washes the absolute out of that.
How it smells
Sweet, heavy and honeyed, with something faintly animal underneath. Sambac reads green, tea-like and luminous; grandiflorum is fruitier, creamier, heavier on the skin. Both dry down warm and soft, with a mushroomy musk you notice only up close.
In perfumery
Put it in the heart and it ties a citrus opening to the woods underneath, adding volume to both. Rose, tuberose, sandalwood and musk all take it well. Plenty of perfumes are built on jasmine and nothing else.
Good to know
Roughly six thousand hand-picked blossoms go into one gram of absolute, among the costliest materials in perfumery. Part of its depth is indole, which smells like decay when concentrated and turns radiant at the trace the flower carries.
Gardenia
Creamy white bloom with a mushroom heart
What it is
A glossy evergreen of the coffee family, out of China and Japan, carrying waxy white flowers that refuse to give up their oil. So perfumers read the living bloom's air and rebuild it from jasmine, tuberose and aroma-chemicals.
How it smells
Lush and creamy, jasmine sweetness laid over tuberose richness, opening with a green, almost buttery freshness. At the core sits the strange part: a mushroom-and-coconut facet, fleshy and faintly savory, that keeps the sweetness from turning candied.
In perfumery
Perfumers use it in the heart, where it brings velvety body to white-floral and tropical compositions. It pairs with tuberose, ylang-ylang, jasmine and coconut, and stars in soliflores built entirely around the bloom.
Good to know
A true gardenia absolute barely exists commercially: the flower yields too little to extract economically, so nearly every gardenia note is a reconstruction. The gardenia you smell has almost certainly never been near a gardenia.
Tolu Balsam
Cinnamon, vanilla and slow amber warmth
What it is
Cut a V into the bark and the tree bleeds a brown, sticky resin that hardens as it meets the air. That is tolu balsam, gathered from a legume tree in Colombia and refined into resinoid or absolute.
How it smells
Warm, sweet and soft, cinnamon threaded through vanilla and dried honey. It opens resinous with a faint floral edge, then spends hours settling into caramelized sugar, old wood and cured tobacco. Nothing about it is sharp.
In perfumery
A base note doing two jobs at once: it sweetens and it holds, giving amber, oriental and gourmand accords their staying power. Vanilla, benzoin, labdanum and tobacco are its natural company.
Good to know
It is named for Tolú in Colombia, though indigenous peoples across the region were using the resin long before any Spanish chronicle wrote it down. Perfumery came late: the balsam spent generations in cough syrup and throat lozenges first.
Oakmoss
The damp green soul of the forest floor
What it is
Not a moss at all, but a lichen, scraped off oak and other deciduous bark across temperate Europe, Russia and North Africa. Solvents turn the harvested growth into a dark, viscous concrete, then the absolute perfumers actually use.
How it smells
Wet stone, damp bark and something inky and leathery underneath, dry and faintly bitter. This is not fresh green: it is the cool floor beneath old trees after rain has soaked the ground.
In perfumery
The backbone of the chypre: a base note that gives a fragrance its shadow and its spine, classically under bergamot, beside labdanum and patchouli. Anything described as mossy, vintage or green-masculine is usually leaning on it.
Good to know
Oakmoss carries two allergens, atranol and chloroatranol, potent enough that the EU banned them from cosmetics outright. Perfumers use stripped grades now, but it was the earlier cap on the extract that changed how the classic chypre smells.
Castoreum
Smoky beaver hide with an aspirin edge
What it is
Territory marking, essentially. The secretion from a beaver's castor sacs, dried by trappers and worked into a tincture or absolute, though what you smell in almost any bottle today is the synthetic version.
How it smells
Dark, tarry leather with a medicinal edge, like birch smoke off a wet coat. Underneath there is sweetness: dried fruit, hay, a smear of vanilla. Dilute it far enough and the growl turns to warm suede.
In perfumery
It anchors the base and holds everything above it: the hide of a leather scent, the smoke of a Russian-leather style, the long tail of an old oriental. It keeps company with birch tar, labdanum, oakmoss and tobacco.
Good to know
Beavers live on willow and poplar bark, thick with salicin, the compound behind aspirin, and it carries through: a cool, almost medicinal thread under all that leather. It has long been a flavouring material as well.
Benzoin
Warm vanilla balsam wept from a tapped tree
What it is
Benzoin does not flow on its own. Someone cuts the bark of a styrax tree in Laos, Vietnam or Sumatra, and the wound weeps a gum that hardens over months into reddish tears.
How it smells
Sweet, warm, unmistakably vanillic, with a powdery amber softness underneath. Siam benzoin is rounder and creamier; Sumatra runs smokier, with a cinnamon bite. Left on skin it turns almost caramelized.
In perfumery
A base note that behaves like a fixative and a sweetener at once, giving amber accords their glow and holding the rest of the composition still. It softens sharp edges beside labdanum, tonka and incense.
Good to know
The word benzene comes from here. Chemists named benzoic acid after this resin, and benzene took its name from the acid. The resin's own name is a worn-down Arabic phrase, luban jawi, frankincense of Java.
Leather
Tanned hide, smoke and animal warmth
What it is
There is no leather essential oil. Perfumers rebuild the smell from birch tar and cade, smoky distilled woods, plus styrax and labdanum resins, isobutyl quinoline and safraleine-type molecules, echoing the tannins and oils once used to cure hides.
How it smells
Smoky, dry and animalic, ranging from supple new suede to tarry old saddle. Birch-tar versions read sooty and phenolic, almost campfire and band-aid; softer suede accords turn powdery, floral and skin-warm.
In perfumery
A base note that lends spine and a carnal edge. It does its best work under rose and violet, alongside tobacco and oud, and a floral heart set on leather turns unmistakably human.
Good to know
The genre was born in Russia, where boots and book bindings were treated with birch tar, and Russian leather still means that smell. The real tanning oils were mostly restricted on safety grounds, so today's leathers are reconstructions.
Immortelle
Sun-baked hay laced with maple and curry
What it is
Gardeners call this silvery Mediterranean shrub the curry plant, and one crushed leaf explains the nickname. Its small yellow flower heads are steam-distilled for an oil or solvent-extracted into an absolute.
How it smells
Dried chamomile and hot straw, then a curry-leaf sharpness you will not expect. The sweetness follows: burnt maple syrup, caramel, a breath of tobacco. It ends honeyed and fenugreek-spiced, with something faintly medicinal underneath.
In perfumery
It works in the heart and base, where its tobacco-and-liqueur warmth sits easily with woods, leather and amber. Perfumers set it against lavender when they want the sweetness to read as contrast rather than dessert.
Good to know
Everlasting is the literal meaning: cut and dried, the flowers keep shape and colour for years, which won them a place in ancient funeral wreaths. Yields are tiny either way, so immortelle sits among the costlier naturals.
Vanilla
Cured orchid pods, custard and faint smoke
What it is
Green pods come off the orchid vine smelling of almost nothing. The scent is made, not found: months of blanching, sweating in the sun and slow drying before the vanillin appears. Mexico first, Madagascar now.
How it smells
Custard and caramel up front, then something darker underneath: dried fruit and a thread of tobacco smoke. It turns powdery as it dries and sits close to the skin. Real cured vanilla reads deeper than vanillin alone.
In perfumery
Perfumers use it to round off edges. Anything too sharp, too green, too austere gets warmth and body from a vanilla base, which is why it anchors many oriental and gourmand builds alongside tonka, amber, sandalwood and spice.
Good to know
Every flower opens for one day. Miss it and there is no pod, so all of it is pollinated by hand, a trick devised by Edmond Albius, a twelve-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion. Most vanilla flavour today is synthetic.
Styrax
Cured leather, cinnamon and warm skin
What it is
Wound a sweetgum tree, Liquidambar, and it bleeds a grey sticky balsam. That balsam is styrax, also called storax, and confusingly it has nothing to do with the genus Styrax, which yields benzoin instead.
How it smells
Sweet, warm and balsamic, with leather, smoke and a touch of cinnamon. Underneath runs something almost vanillic and skin-warm. It opens faintly medicinal and dries down ambery and clinging, like cured hide.
In perfumery
Perfumers keep it in the base, where it holds the formula in place and supplies the leather itself. Run it through amber and incense and you get the warm animal underside of the classic leathers and chypres.
Good to know
Temples have burned it for thousands of years, and the reason is in the smell: of all the balsams, this is the one that reads as human. Warm skin, not church smoke.
Costus
Warm hair and skin, animalic and unsettling
What it is
A Himalayan thistle whose roots, kuth in India, are dried, then steam-distilled or solvent-extracted into a thick, dark oil that smells almost nothing like a plant.
How it smells
Unwashed hair, scalp, worn wool, with a greasy earthiness under it. Some people find a dry orris-violet facet beneath the funk; others say wet dog or old leather. Dense, slow to fade, and faintly sweet at the end.
In perfumery
In the base it made a chypre or a leather smell like it had already been worn by someone. Perfumers reach now for safe reconstructions such as Costus Oliffac to get the same hair-like signature.
Good to know
Perfumery gave it up once the natural oil was ruled too strong a skin sensitiser to use, and the ban took its current form in 2006. The plant is protected and critically endangered in any case, overharvested for the very roots that made it interesting.
Fragrance Character
Galbanum and aldehydes project sharply from the first seconds before clementine and hyacinth soften the edges into something herbal and cool. The heart thickens as rose and plum absorb into iris, the whole accord becoming more intimate and talced. On the drydown, oakmoss and castoreum anchor it to skin, leather and immortelle threading through the benzoin and vanilla with an animalic, resinous warmth that lingers close for hours.
Longevity
how long it stays on skin
The hourglass reads wear time: how many hours the fragrance keeps speaking before it fades. A bar that barely leaves the start means a few fleeting hours. One that runs the full length carries from morning into evening. Treat it as typical, not promised. Oily skin holds scent far longer than dry.
Sillage
the size of its scent trail
Sillage is French for a ship's wake, and that is exactly what this measures: how much of the scent reaches the room instead of staying on you. Low is a whisper only close friends catch. Enormous fills the room, then keeps filling it after you leave.
Experimental
Built to provoke, not to please
Some perfumes are made to be liked. These are made to be argued about: inky tar, hot rubber, fruit on the turn, metal and fur where you expected flowers. The coin glows for a scent that provokes and dims for one that plays it safe, which is sometimes the point.
Office
Polished, and never louder than the room
Scent is manners in a shared room. At this range it should reach the person across the desk and stop there: tidy citrus, soft musk, pale woods, all of it reading competent and considerate. A glowing coin means nobody has to mention it. A dim one means it travels.
Evening
After dark, when it deepens
Dinner, drinks, the night that runs long. Low light is where ambers, resins and smoky woods stop being polite, and where a plush floral finally blooms. A glowing coin means it is waiting for exactly this hour. A dim one means it did its best work in daylight.
Romantic
Close enough to be felt
A fragrance can hum against skin instead of announcing itself across a table. That is the register here: creamy florals, vanilla, soft musk, a thread of spice, warm enough to make someone lean in. The coin glows when a scent sets that mood and dims when it is more practical than seductive.
Formal
Quiet authority in a dressed-up room
A wedding, a ceremony, a room where everyone has thought about their shoes. What works here is structure, not volume: smooth woods, disciplined florals, soft leather. A glowing coin means it holds its posture all evening. A dim one means it is too casual for the room.
Casual
Easy comfort for unhurried days
Errands, coffee, a slow Saturday with nowhere to be. Nothing here has to impress anyone, so the fit is soft and easy: fresh citrus, light woods, a little warmth off the skin. A glowing coin says yes to all that. A dim one means the fragrance is asking for a bigger night.
Day to Night
where its mood naturally falls
A bar running from sun to moon, reading the hour the fragrance was made for. The more of it that stays gold, the more the scent belongs to daylight and open air. The further the blue reaches back toward the sun, the deeper and warmer it turns: evening, candlelight, low rooms.
Winter
Warmth that carries through cold air
Cold air mutes a fragrance and slows it down, which is why winter belongs to the dense and the warm: resin, smoke, vanilla, leather, ambered spice. The bar reads how well this one pushes back, glowing against the chill instead of thinning out in it.
Spring
Fresh blooms in mild, rising warmth
Mild, humid air lifts a light composition, so the season belongs to dewy florals, green stems, soft powder and citrus you can see through. Alive rather than heavy. The further the green runs along the bar, the more comfortably this one wears in that weather.
Summer
Bright and airy in real heat
Heat does the projecting for you, which is why the wrong perfume turns unbearable by noon. What survives is cool and breathable: sharp citrus, salt air, aromatic herbs, water. Things that refresh instead of cloy. A short bar here means save it for cooler months.
Fall
Spiced warmth for cooling days
As the air cools, the rich materials stop smothering and start reading clearly: dry woods, warm spice, tobacco, amber, fruit gone golden. It is the season perfume turns contemplative. The bar fills according to how naturally this one settles into crisp, cooling days.
Best Worn
Autumn evenings and the colder months reward its weight best, the kind of scent that suits a coat, candlelight, or a formal table where something composed and uncompromising is exactly right.
Choose options
The Vibe
The Nose
Bertrand Duchaufour
Founder and perfumer
French perfumer who trained in Grasse at Lautier Florasynth, served as L'Artisan Parfumeur's house perfumer and now runs his own Paris house, L'Entropiste. He is best known for incense: L'Artisan Parfumeur Timbuktu and Dzongkha, Comme des Garçons Avignon and Amouage Jubilation XXV.
The Maison
Classical French perfumery in bust topped flacons, taken by the pour.
MDCI treats perfumery the way a private collector treats a cellar, quietly commissioning some of the most respected noses in the craft and refusing to rush a formula. Every release feels composed rather than churned out, all polished construction and old world confidence.
- Origin
- Paris, France
- Founded
- 2003
- Known for
- Chypre Palatin, Invasion Barbare
EVERY DECANT
From the original bottle to your door
We buy the original flacon at full retail price, direct from the house.
A medical grade Socorex syringe takes the exact millilitres straight from the flacon.
Packed into the hot foiled box and handed to DHL, every duty already paid. How a decant is made
More from MDCI
You may also like
