Expand Your Fashion Vocabulary #42
Chypre: The French word for Cyprus. Chypre became known as a family of perfumes after François Coty launched a fragrance named “Chypre de Coty” in 1917. Chypre fragrances exhibit a top note of citrus with a woodsy base of Cyprian oak moss and ambergris.
The related word “Cyprian” is also used to describe both a worshipper of the goddess Aphrodite (who was born on Cyprus), and a wanton woman or a prostitute, adding an interesting dynamic to the name of Coty’s influential fragrance.
