After introducing scents from exotic lands to the world, a French brand finally makes one about its home.
FOR almost 60 years, French scent brand Diptyque has captured fans with its eclectic, inimitable scents. The spicy tuberose scent in Do Son, for example, takes us to Halong Bay, Vietnam where in summer, the sea breeze is dense with the smell of the flower.
In Eau Moheli, ylang ylang takes centre stage, as it does in the island of Moheli in the Comoros archipelago.
In Tempo, three patchouli extracts from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi hover between elegant and woody.
But Diptyque has never made a scent about its home, Paris, until now.
For the first launch of the brand for the decade, the brand said it is making “amends for being silent for so long,” by “paying homage to its native city”.
But Paris, who those who love it, is not a straightforward city, and Diptyque is not a run-of-the-mill perfume brand either.
So while the conception of the new fragrance, Eau Capitale, follows a principle conceived more than a century ago, perfumer Olivier Pescheux has illuminated it with the lights of the 21st century.
An abstract, enigmatic fragrance, it embodies a form of slightly detached refinement of the elegance exuded by the aura of the City of Light.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF ROSE
There are three main ingredients in Eau Capitale — rose, patchouli and bergamot — so you can expect the scent to not be soft and flighty.
It opens with the freshness of bergamot, but only in an instant, before you smell the strong bouquet of flowers — roses from Bulgaria and Turkey and ylang-ylang from the Comoros.
With patchouli’s leaf, distilled to the heart in Indonesia, it receives its strength and firm footedness.
Finally, Georgywood delivers its earthy and dark vetiver-like aspects and ambrofix, a scent that’s a mix of musk, dry tobacco and ambergris, closes the door of this city.
I like Diptyque fragrances for their identity and creativity.
In this case, even though it’s centred on rose, the scent as a whole is strong and woody, full bodied and distinguished. On me, it starts off smelling floral before giving way to the scent of musk at the end of the day.
The new scent also comes with its scented candle, Paris en Fleur, and scented oval, with main ingredients for both being rose and bergamot.
Eau Capitale is a multi-faceted fragrance whose story will unfold as many times as one wears it.
It’s mysterious and enigmatic, an unexpected combination of the sweet scent of rose and the tropical plant patchouli — known as nilam in Malay or patchai in Tamil — that delivers a delightful experience. Just like Paris.