Flora & Fauna Rogue 2020

That Manuel Cross knows how to create a Chypre, especially in the traditional style, he has sufficiently proven with ‘Chypre Siam’, ‘Tabac Vert’, ‘40 Rogue’, and ‘Tuberose & Moss’. Anyone who sniffs these creations may completely forget that just a few years ago there were fierce debates about the pros and cons of banning oak and tree moss. A whiff of ‘Chypre Siam’, and it’s as if nothing ever happened.
Well, he doesn’t care about the restrictions of an IFRA in faraway America. Let the pitiful colleagues on the old continent struggle to breathe new life into the good old, unfortunately butchered Aunt Chypre - at his home, she is still very much alive.

Now then, ‘Flora & Fauna’.

I confess I ordered this scent blindly, but what could go wrong: a new Chypre fragrance from Mr. Cross, additionally advertised by the US online retailer Luckyscent as “...masterpiece of all-natural perfumery” - nothing could possibly go wrong.

And it didn’t.

‘Flora & Fauna’ is exactly what I hoped for, and yes, I also expected a bit: a classic Chypre of the finest kind! The scent even surpasses the aforementioned predecessors - which were already convincing representatives of this genre. With them, Manuel Cross illuminated a bit of the corners of the Chypre cosmos: sometimes the green-spicy corner, sometimes the powdery-animalic, or the Asian-floral. ‘Flora & Fauna’, however, rests in itself, occupies the middle of the room, or in other words: it is likely meant to be read as the quintessence of his struggle for a Chypre fragrance of old style, one that gently opens up to modernity and primarily reveals its own signature.

When measuring, of course, one cannot overlook two heroes of the past: Coty’s epochal ‘Chypre’, and Jacques Guerlain’s response to it, the equally epochal ‘Mitsouko’.
‘Chypre Siam’ can be viewed in many ways as Manuel Cross’s attempt to reinterpret François Coty’s scent. ‘Flora & Fauna’, on the other hand, could be understood as an appeal to ‘Mitsouko’. For the brilliant twist of Jacques Guerlain was to juxtapose the bitter-mossy background noise of the Chypre construct with a ripe fruit and its sweet-bitter, even leathery nuances: the peach.
Manuel Cross instead chooses the apricot, or as a variant: a supposedly dried apricot.
And you can smell it right at the beginning of the scent development, oh yes! It practically jumps out at you, holding the bitter-peel, citrus-fresh bergamot right under its arm. This herb-sweet fruit duo dances on the balsamic, softly ambered heart, which in turn is embraced by a strong base marked by labdanum and oak moss.

Of course, the juicy apricot accord is a clear nod towards ‘Mitsouko’, only that ‘Flora & Fauna’ comes across as less madam-like, rather more graceful, light-footed.
This may be due to the absence of a floral bouquet. ‘Mitsouko’ holds an entire bouquet in its arms: rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, even lilac. The Rogue scent: nada. No flower in sight, at least none that would push itself to the forefront. Manuel Cross has somewhat disarmed, or better: streamlined. And lo and behold: the stripped-down concept works.

However, I do wonder a bit about the naming: ‘Flora’, which flora? Well, mosses, lichens, and resins also count as flora. But please, which ‘fauna’?
Here I do become a little skeptical.
Manuel Cross promotes this scent by claiming it is ‘all-natural’. Seriously? Even the civet, which is supposedly in there, and which one can only faintly sense?
Real, natural civet?
I hope not.
Because as good as ‘Flora & Fauna’ smells, the use of real civet would somewhat disqualify this scent. A slight guilty conscience is already gnawing at me for having hastily pressed the purchase button in my excitement over the Rogue Chypre...
Well, I will find out, and until then hope that the ‘all-natural’ doesn’t really refer to ‘all’.

Aside from the only subtly used civet, the leathery nuances of the ‘fauna’ must of course also be accounted for. But please do not think of genuine leather Chypres like ‘Bandit’ or ‘Cabochard’ in this case. The leathery touch here is more of a team player than a protagonist, more soft, light leather than rough and dark.
Here, ‘Flora & Fauna’ reminds me a bit of ‘Diorling’, whose leathery facets smell similarly finely smoothed and soft, while the base does not develop the warmth of the Rogue scent. However, another newer Chypre fragrance, Annette Neuffer’s ‘Chyprette’ - also ‘all-natural’ - does develop that warmth. Perhaps Manuel Cross was inspired by this, as it is striking that barely a year after the release of the Neuffer fragrance, Manuel Cross comes around the corner with his. While ‘Chyprette’ is of course purely natural, I am a bit surprised by the explicit emphasis on naturalness in ‘Flora & Fauna’, as Manuel Cross has so far been known for his resistance to bureaucratic regulations, but less for a tendency towards natural perfumes.

The goal of his efforts was evidently to prove to himself and all skeptics that a Chypre fragrance based purely on natural ingredients, without the use of synthetic substitutes, is achievable.

He has succeeded.

It is also understandable that this comes at a price. As Annette Neuffer already explains on her website, natural extracts cost many times more than their synthetic substitutes - the differences are truly enormous!
So it should not be surprising that for a bottle of ‘Flora & Fauna’ one has to pay a bit more than for other Rogue fragrances, which themselves already have a high proportion of natural ingredients.
As a small compensation for the extra cost, one is rewarded not only with a qualitatively extremely high-quality scent but also with a pretty little foldable wooden box that wonderfully matches the content: in a pleasantly fine and noble way, without any hint of pompous pretentiousness.

Bravo!