Moustache (1949)
by Rochas

Citrus, pine, civet, moss. I think I just need to say no to chypres from now on. I don't like you, chypres. I give up. Some say Rochas Moustache is reminiscent of Eau Sauvage and I can see this. Of course, I don't like Eau Sauvage, either. Too much civet, too old-fashioned (though if you want to evoke this era, there you go). I have my own strategies for smelling faintly of urine, thanks ever so, Rochas.

I suppose someone could pull it off with some attitude and possibly some layering, maybe the right kind of hat ...admittedly it smells better to me on paper.

It's not very strong or lasting on me and the drydown is quite tame, so there is a mercy.

17th July, 2011.

horse pee and grapefruit, together at last!

17th June, 2011.

Eau Sauvage, Chanel Pour Monsieur, YSL Pour Homme, Rochas Moustache. A "this is how we do it" version of the classic chypre enriched with a pine note, animalic hints (civet) on a slightly sweet base. Great.

21st May, 2011.

I can see Moustache as related to Eau Sauvage, but it has a fruit rather than a flower at its heart. Its opening citrus is very lemony, but like Eau Sauvage, the beauty is when the fragrances has settled down. Then it's rich, but not heavy, complex, but organized, and manly without the clichés.

I mourn its demise, but more than that I mourn the demise of all the other derived products Rochas used to make from it: aftershave, balm, shaving soap (can you imagine the glory!), bath soap, deo, etc.

Like many men's classic, it's a fragrance that once turned into a way of life, so that a many would never worry about conflicting smells, and get a gold watch at the end of his 30-year tenure with the fragrance. Get it while you still can.

4th February, 2011.

Moustache is nominally a masculine citrus, floral chypre. It falls into the same category as Chanel Pour Monsieur, Monsieur de Givenchy and even its own sibling Eau Sauvage. But something about the twists of its construction leaves a crisp dryness akin to Guerlain’s Vetiver. Moustache’s lime and peppery carnation give an astringency similar in tone to Vetiver’s licoricy-vetiver dryness.

All of Moustache’s elements play off its central strong chypre base. The dryness has a scrubbed and starched quality that stands out brilliantly against growling animalic undertones. It’s as if Moustache’s affable eau de cologne-like gentleman’s chypre hides a bit of a snarl. Like an ongoing dare. What’s marvelous is that this tension lasts through the entirely of the scent’s evolution.

There are through-lines to many of Edmond Roudnitska’s pieces (Eau d’Hermes, Eau Sauvage, Diorella) but I find that Moustache, an early work by Roudnistka and his wife Therese, shares a particular quality with one of his last pieces, Mario Valentino’s Ocean Rain. Moustache has an interestingly dusty, dry-soil feel/scent. Ocean Rain has an underpinning of the flat scent of clean soil in water---mud. My bet is that it’s largely due to the moss.

I don’t mean to ridicule Roudnitska’s work by comparing it to dirt. On the contrary I only mean to point out that the beautiful complexity of his work comes from so many different directions and reflects a far-reaching creativity.

9th December, 2010. (Last Edited: 21st March, 2011.)

Off-scenter has, more or less, nailed this one. It works on so many levels, but the main one is that I get to smell like 1949. Being that I was born in 1966, that is an amazing thing to me. So, this is really not so much of a great review as it is a bit a prose from a viewpoint of profound admiration. The citrus opening moves into the animalic heart and the rest is pointless to me. I love drydowns, but (for some reason) Moustache's drydown doesn't matter to me. The opening and the heart notes carry this one. Lovely stuff and highly recommended..

13rd October, 2010.