Foin Fraîchement Coupé by Oriza L. Legrand
"Perfect for every dreamer (or anyone tired of department store synthetic warfare)."
Foin Fraîchement Coupé
(Fragrantica, Oriza L. Legrand, LuckyScent)
Picking wildflowers beside glittering, effervescent waters, siphoning the sweetness from red clover petals with your tongue while wearing a Matsuda straw hat & Cacharel liberty print dress. Foin Fraîchement Coupé (‘freshly cut hay’) by Oriza L. Legrand is one of the most unexpected gifts from the treasured French house, and I gravitate toward it even more as I await the first blooming snowdrops of spring. A soft herbaceous chorus of ivy, soapwort, sage, and shimmering frost-covered hay bales are met with an energetic juxtaposition — bitter angelica, wild mint, and star anise — nipping at your heels like a rambunctious wolfhound puppy in a bucolic oil painted scene.
When I think of this fragrance as a spring scent, I imagine the earliest days of spring — the star anise and mint paint a particular crispness in the air. It’s cold without being overly melancholic or aloof; in fact, it’s quite joyous. The silage is introverted, inviting those closest to you in with moderate longevity. This mystical bouquet of solitude is as natural as crushing freshly picked herbs and flowers onto your own skin or rolling down a grassy knoll.
As a hay note lover, this wouldn’t be my first choice if I wanted to smell like a warm, Andrew Wyeth sun-soaked day —but that’s exactly why I love it. It is by no means a dry, dusty hay bale like Serge Lutens’ Chergui; this is green, verdant, freshly baled hay. This fragrance is timeless, almost vampiric, the way it transmutes itself into endless imagined women in my mind. She could be a Belle Époque woman, coquettish in the most classical sense, arriving at a dinner party with a small pink canary hiding beneath her crinoline cage skirt. Or even the blonde girl in Picnic At Hanging Rock with her Botticelli angel-esque beauty, who mysteriously vanishes inside a volcanic formation on Valentine’s Day. It’s a rare fragrance where the inner mystery isn’t dark and brooding, but pastel, hazy, and light — like an early Sarah Moon editorial. It’s the moment you realize that freshly picked clover will soon wilt away, or the feeling of studying your own pond reflection as the clouds above you close in like lush curtains.
If it were an aria it would be: “Tristan und Isolde” by Richard Wagner.
If it were a stone it would be: pale green chalcedony.
Perfect for every dreamer (or anyone tired of department store synthetic warfare).
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Jenna Horoky is an artist and jeweler living in Chicago. She’s been on the newsletter before — read her feature here.
* Images, in order of appearance: David Hamilton, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Sarah Moon.
