Diptyque Eau Lente

When I first smelled Eau Lente, months ago, I wasn't crazy about it. Sometimes, I have bigger fish to fry, and this was one of those days. I was debating more heavily-discussed fragrances, and the bit of Eau Lente I'd sprayed on my arm seemed wan by comparison. The squeaky wheel got the grease. I can't remember what I walked away with, but it's hard to believe, smelling it now, that I ever thought Eau Lente was timid. While it isn't Poison or Giorgio, both near contemporaries and handy comparisons, it's no shrinking violet, either. It lasts very well, is immensely interesting, and has the power to initiate or terminate conversation. I'm going to venture a guess and say I'll end up wearing it more than whatever I chose back when we first crossed paths.

I've loved Diptyque since I first heard of the line, back in the mid- to late nineties. Several cool people I knew had the candles--probably Figeur/Philosykos, which came out in 1996. Philosykos remains one of the best fig fragrances, and has been much imitated. At the time, there was nothing like it. Though it was a slight change of tune for Diptyque itself (more food, less spice) the fig fragrance showed how ahead of the curve the company tended to be. Diptyque really was one of the first niche lines to permeate my consciousness, and throughout the nineties and onward, before I ever heard of Lutens, L'Artisan, Malle, Bond, or Rosine, I'd smelled and appreciated some of those earliest Diptyque scents, if only by candle.

It's only now, years on, that I can appreciate how forward thinking the line's really been. The latest fragrances have been much less compelling to me; otherwise, I suspect I might have had occasion to undergo some sort of reassessment sooner. Diptyque isn't quite--okay, not nearly--as cutting edge now as it was. The line still produces some lovely things, but the shock of gorgeous strangeness is lacking most of the time. In many ways, L'Ombre Dans L'eau (1983), with its shockingly bright burst of dew on roses, seems like an important transition, pointing the way toward the company's future florals without turning away from the idiosyncrasies of its past. Opone (2001) turned back to the past altogether but failed, for me, to resume some of those earlier qualities. For the most part, I'd forgotten about the line until recently.

Diptyque began as a purveyor of home furnishings and printed fabrics. Eventually they added candles to the inventory. The candles, even now, sell very well. The hand drawn quality of the packaging feels consistent with the aesthetics of the sixties, the decade during which Diptyque was launched; it makes even more sense when you learn that the company was created by a textile designer, a set designer, and a painter. They don't seem to be doing much at this point beyond the candles, room sprays (may I recommend the sublime John Galliano and Pomander?), and body care (fragrance, lotion, butters, soaps) but I suppose that's quite enough. I suspect part of what made those earliest fragrances like Eau Lente so fantastic was Diptyque's identification as something other than a manufacturer or personal hygiene product, and its open embrace of 60s homeopathy.

L'Eau (1968), the first scent, is one of my favorites, a compellingly robust, nearly boozy, arrangement of clove, rose, cinnamon, and sandalwood. It's heaven in a bottle and the farthest thing from anything you'd find in your average body shop. It smells more like something you'd find in some chic, French hippie apothecary, as do L'Autre (1973) and L'Eau Trois (1975). L'Autre is a veritable spice cabinet--cardamom, pepper, cumin, coriander, caraway, nutmeg--the combination of which, for once, finds a way to subdue carnation. Some people hate L'Autre. Okay, many people. It's a dividing fragrance. I love that about it. To blame this on the cumin is giving cumin an awful lot of credit. L'Eau Trois seems to have been discontinued and I'm glad I found a bottle. There's a lot of myrrh in Trois, but there are other things as well: caraway, rosemary, pine, and olibanum. These fragrances looked forward many years to the spicy gourmands and orientals many perfume lovers take for granted, and still they manage to surprise and even shock. There's a purity of intent to them you don't find as much anymore, not even in fairly fearless commercial enterprises like Lutens.

Eau Lente came a little later (1986), several years after neon rosy L'Ombre, but it relates very strongly to the company's first fragrances. It is to opopanax what L'Eau is to clove and Trois is to myrrh, but cinnamon plays a central role, as do other unidentified spices. Unlike Ligea La Sirena, another opopanax-based scent (Carthusia), Eau Lente doesn't feel very powdery to me; nor very vanillic. Many disagree. Some say it smells like Old Spice. I don't really get that either, though I do get a little of that after shave vibe from yet another opopanax fragrance, Imperial Opopanax (Les Nereides). For me, Eau Lente remains spicy from start to finish. Like the other early Diptyque scents, it remains compelling and robust throughout. I can see a direct link between Eau Lente and Rousse (Serge Lutens), which is equally bold but gentler, and more floral in feel. Really, though, there's nothing like it. Lente smells as new to me now as it must have to those who smelled it when it first came out.

I have tremendous admiration for Diptyque and appreciate these fragrances, which over the years have offered something truly singular in terms of vision, quality, and pleasure.

This Week at the Perfume Counter: Diptyque, L'Autre, Patou's Colony, Chanel No. 5

Every once in a while I get sick of shopping for perfume at the mall, or the disadvantages of dealing with idiosyncratic personnel outweigh the elation of walking away with a bottle in my hands. This week I did a lot of online shopping. One of my favorite places to buy from is The Perfume House in Portland. Tracie, the woman who helps me there, knows what she's talking about, and she's always nice to deal with. I have a memory of being there and can see the layout in my head, as well as a slightly hazier recollection of the perfumes I was shown over the course of the scattered ten hours I spent there. Several weeks ago I asked Tracie to set aside whatever they have left from the Patou Ma Collection. I hadn't been very interested back when I visited the store. At the time, I'd never heard of them, and the boxes looked old, so I figured they had spoiled. Since then I've read a lot about these fragrances and know how stupid I was to leave Portland without smelling them. I own Normandie, which I purchased from Perfume House over the phone, and Ma Liberte, which I found in the local Korean-owned store, Memphis Fragrance (a single 1.7 oz. bottle remained; a tester, priced at 20 bucks).

I want Cocktail most of all, but The Perfume House is out. Now that The Perfume Guide has come out, and people read blogs more frequently or avidly, they're curious about some of the older, harder to find perfumes, and they know that The Perfume House might just carry them. Gone is Vol de Nuit. Going is the Ma Collection. Recently I bought one of the last half ounce bottles of Colony they had, in parfum extrait. I'm told it smells like pineapple and leather, like a Bandit drenched in fruit cocktail, though not so much sweet as sun-kissed. That remains to be seen. The package has yet to arrive, and the anticipation isn't exactly delicious. Each day, I hope to find it in the mail. So far, each day, on some level, has therefore been a disappointment. Tracie included samples of Tabac Blonde and Vol de Nuit, warning me that the latter is from an old bottle and I'll need to wait for the top notes to clear out in order to truly appreciate the scent.

From Bigelow Chemists I ordered Diptyque's L'Autre, which seems to stratify the sniffing audience over on Basenotes.net but seems right up my alley, with its overdose on Cumin and coriander, a distinct garam masala bent. In Philadelphia I went to a spa shop which had a limited selection of fragrance, including the Lutens line, Acqua di Parma, and Diptyque. Of Diptyque, they carried Oyedo, Olene, Tam Dao, Philosokos, L'eau, Do Son, and a few others. I'd read about one in the Turin/Sanchez book which intrigued me but I couldn't recall what it was. Something curried or spiced. Tam Dao, based on the name alone, seemed the most logical conclusion, but it didn't smell the way the one I was looking for had been described. I ended up buying L'eau because it smelled close enough, like a clove pomander. I wore it to the premiere of my movie in Philly and nearly sent the cute festival volunteer who picked me up from the hotel to carry me to the theater into coughing fits, though he was polite about it and denied the one had anything to do with the other. One thing I realized from this experience is that, however attractive a guy finds me, my cologne will always put him off, and I'm just not willing to reverse that trend if, as I suspect, it means some form of abstinence (involving perfume, that is; it will inevitably involve sex, I imagine; or, rather, it will not involve it--but I digress...). Like Colony, L'Autre has yet to come, so my vague theories about layering pineapple and curry will continue to go untested for the time being.

Passing through Jonesboro on the way back from my mother's house this weekend, I stopped at a newly christened shopping mall. I found two DVD boxed sets I'd been looking for: one on Deneuve, the other on Delon. It occurred to me that I spend a lot of money, perhaps more than I have, as I handed my card to the guy behind the counter. Are Deneuve and Delon worth it, I wondered. Let's take them home and see!

I moved on to the department store, heading over to the Chanel counter. The young woman working there was startlingly good at what she did. It caught me off guard and I started chewing my gum so vigorously she must have been plotting her escape route. I was trying to decided whether to get Chanel No. 5 again. I play out this particular drama frequently. What do I want with Chanel No. 5? I ask myself. Chanel No. 5 is nice, to be sure, and the aldehydes are something else, but I have...a lot of perfume and, well, I mean, how much more do I need? And yet. I'd never smelled No. 5 in parfum extrait, and here the delicate boxes were, tiny white squares with the Chanel logo stamped on them. God, you've got a problem, I told myself as it became clear that she was moving toward a sale and I toward a purchase. I applaud you for buying extrait, she said, before I'd said I intended to. She explained the difference between the three concentrations, and described Chanel's private supply of rose and ylang ylang or whatever. She seemed as interested in it all as I was. I know! I imagined saying. Let's take a field trip there! We'll frolic in, like, ylang ylang all day and such.

She's been working for Chanel for two years. She came from San Diego, and I have no idea why she would migrate to Jonesboro, Arkansas, of all places, where the summer heat makes perfume a losing battle. It can't take long to whiz through a bottle of No. 5 in this weather. Yet she looked immaculately put together, and so friendly, as if she'd never had to deal with flop sweat, or leave cologne in her car while she went into the mall to get her fix. She really seemed to have absorbed all her training. She knew just about everything you would want her to know, and what she didn't know she somehow made you forget having asked. She made you want to work at the Chanel counter, just so you could be that happy and informed and, I don't know, stand there smelling the testers all day. We do employ men, she said, though she added: Maybe not in Jonesboro, but we do.

I bought my quarter ounce and went on my way, until I got a ways down the hall and I remembered the whole ordeal with Chanel on Rodeo, how my Cuir de Russie had arrived in the mail looking less than composed, and I turned around, because if anyone knew how to do things at Chanel, if anyone could make it all better, it had to be her. I returned to the Chanel counter and told her all about my horrible, traumatizing experience. The label was all runny! I sobbed. The cap was broken and the perfume had leaked out into the packaging. She told me to call Chanel in Beverly Hills. If they don't take care of it, she said, call me, and I will. You bought a luxury item and it should arrive like one. What Chanel needs, I thought as I walked away, is someone like her wrapping their shipments.

I've been smelling No. 5 for the last few days, and what fascinates me most about it is how infrequently people talk about the vetiver, which totally, if almost subliminally, transforms the rose/ylang ylang accord, providing a classic masculine foundation to a classic feminine perfume.