Diptyque L'Eau de L'Eau

At some point in the last year or two, during their repackaging thrust, Diptyque changed the concentration of their Les Eaux series. Previously colognes, these now became eau de toilette, with better lasting power and slightly different behaviors on the skin. I must have smelled the cologne versions when they first started releasing them; however, until recently, I think the last one I'd paid any attention to was L'eau de Tarocco. It wasn't a memorable experience, and I dutifully ignored all subsequent releases.

Turns out that was a mistake, because even in their cologne concentrations these scents were largely fantastic. My favorites are L'eau de Hesperides and L'eau de L'eau, both of which are reinterpretations, or variations, of earlier Diptyque releases (Oyedo and the line's flagship fragrance, L'eau, respectively). Both are wonderful - the addition of immortelle to Oyedo is a revelation - but L'eau de L'eau distinguishes itself for me through its combination of bitter zest and clove.

It's an unusual take on cologne, spicy yet fresh, tart without a wince. This is effervescence done in a way I can get behind. You might like effervescent. It's never done much for me. Volatility is fine with me as long as something enters left stage for a second and hopefully a third act. I pretty scrupulously avoid one act colognes, of which there are too many, and the recent craze for all things "L'eau de" have made my trips to the department store even more infrequent than they'd already become. L'eau de L'eau lasts well for a "cologne", and though it smells cologne-like in general effect, there are significant twists and tweaks. It isn't at all a skin scent (also, for me, a dread descriptor) and it doesn't race its way off the radar before you have time to register it. People will smell it on you. You'll smell it on yourself.

The cologne version was punchier and didn't last all too poorly itself. There were things I liked about it - its brightness, its overload of spice - that the eau de toilette has adjusted. When you sprayed on the cologne it was like puncturing an orange rind with a clove bud. The spice in the eau de toilette is still there, but the rose has been boosted, bringing L'eau de L'eau closer to its inspiration, the wonderful L'eau. This makes the clove a little less startling, and the overall fragrance that much richer and deeper. Ginger, lavender, pimento and geranium give the scent a piquancy its inspiration didn't have, but all are held in balance to the rose. The patchouli is hard to put a finger on, in case patchouli frightens you.

L'eau was pomander in a bottle. I first wore it at a film festival in Philadelphia, shocking my festival-appointed escort as I stepped into the car. It's a wondrous fragrance - one you don't miss - and still in production, though harder to find at stores which carry Diptyque. It's a go-to favorite of mine and its relation to L'eau de L'eau is unmistakable, yet L'eau de L'eau is very much its own fragrance as well, and each comes in handy for different moods. If you've tried L'eau and found it a bit much, you might find L'eau de L'eau more to your liking or speed.

The perfumer of L'eau de L'eau is Olivier Pescheux. The notes are listed as green mandarin, grapefruit, petitgrain, lemon, ginger, orange blossom, cinnamon, lavender, pimento, cloves, geranium, tonka bean, patchouli and benzoin. The fragrance comes in 100ml.

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.

Christmas Smells: A Purely Biased List of Favorites, PART ONE

I'm not one for seasonal strictures--I'm dressed in white as I type this--and when it comes to fragrances, I find that I wear the ones I love all across the calendar. Still, scent is associative, and no time evokes specific memories around smell more than Christmas.

The fragrances I love to rediscover during this holiday aren't always the usual suspects; certainly not often the flankers intended to conjure a fantasy feast of gingerbread and fruitcake. My favorites scatter the elements of Christmas like a cubist painting, approaching the subject from a variety of angles simultaneously. They parcel Christmas out into bits and pieces of sensory memory, rendering them with photographic detail. Theoretically, I'd have to wear these fragrances all at once to get the bigger picture. In reality, they only work separately, one at a time, demonstrating how complex and textured the memories surrounding holidays are. Forty Christmas seasons have accrued a dense system of overlapping triggers. The following are the tip of the icicle.

New Haarlem (Bond No. 9)

There are several good coffee-centered scents in my cabinet (Ava Luxe Cafe Noir and A*Men Pure Coffee, to name a few). New Haarlem is something of a curiosity among them. While the coffee note is unmistakable, it tends to be much more impressionistic, depicting not just the steaming cup but the mood of the breakfast table conversation. As it wears, New Haarlem becomes slightly spicy, with interesting undertones of amber.

Ambre Fetiche (Annick Goutal)

Ambre Fetiche is a deeply resonant mixture of resins and leather (birch tar, maybe?). It lasts and lasts, and lasts some more. This is a slowly collapsing, intermittently crackling pile of resinous logs left burning in the fireplace, viewed through the frosted glow of nighttime windowpanes.

Nuit de Noel (Caron)

Christmas is the smell of things stewing, simmering, and roasting. So what's with all the marzipan? Nuit de Noel is that rare seasonal fragrance, which bypasses sweet tooth for smoked savory and mixed nuts. That would be wood smoke and hazelnuts, and mingling somewhere within is the combined effect of all the settled-in perfumes worn by the women of the house.

L'eau (Diptyque)

The pomander hanging over the dinner table, distributing the aroma of clove, fir branch, orange oil, cinnamon, and dried rose in all directions. Approaching religious experience, it manages to insert the mood of Christmas Eve cathedral (those vast, vaulted ceilings and a Christmas tree the size of Rockefeller Center) into the dining room.

Wrappings (Clinique)

While not technically a seasonal release, Wrappings is sold only at Christmas. You get a 30 ml bottle with perhaps an equally modest tube of lotion. Forget the lotion, and buy the gift for yourself. This stuff is Ormonde Jayne Woman writ in neon the colors of pine tree and holly berry. Where Woman is warm, sleepy-eyed, and twilit, Wrappings is blinding bright and bracing cold. Woman is a solitary walk along a forest trail. Wrappings is a party in the snow. Mace, artemisia, cedar, and moss go the expected places. What veers Wrappings down an unknown path is the steep cocktail of cyclamen, jasmine, rose, carnation, and orris, electrified by aldehydes. The overall effect is as exhilarating as a snowball fight deep in the woods.

Minuit de Messe (Etro)

I get confused when people go on about this one's gothic prowess, as if it were all dungeon stone and incense smoke. It must be my chemistry, or my nose. Messe has always been user-friendly for me, a mellow, resinous incense. There's a wonderful zest of citrus up top, which takes its time leaving. Upon its departure, frankincense and amber move to the center of the picture. Truly a midnight mass, materializing a dim cathedral full of well-dressed men, women and children, all buzzing with barely contained, drowsy excitement under a veneer of respectably somber supplication.

Gaultier2

There's too much dissonance in there to dismiss this as a sweet-shop essay on all things cake and cookie. "Woodsy notes" are listed in the pyramid, along with amber, musk, and an admittedly ubiquitous vanilla. This doesn't begin to get at the weird play of contrasts in Gaultier2. It's a dividing fragrance. Some find it saccharine. I find it has just the right touch of Barbasol. There's enough five o'clock shadow and tobacco in there to complicate the picture. One of the few fragrances to remind me of the men hanging out on the periphery of the Christmas festivities. Simultaneously robust and laid-back.

Anne Pliska (Anne Pliska)

Somewhere between Shalimar's citrus petrol and Obsession's electric spice, Anne Pliska's signature scent strikes the perfect balance between edible and inedible on the oriental continuum. Abundantly tranquil, like a half-recalled moment of a forgotten Christmas day, where the chatter of family and the steady rustle of gift wrap evolved into a quiet, subtle hum, clearing your mind to unnoticed pleasures, scents from the kitchen you hadn't been able to smell through all the noise.

Agent Provocateur (Agent Provocateur)

Roses are really the last thing the holidays bring to mind, yet despite all its comparisons to rose chypres past, Agent Provocateur manages to evoke the season in a way none of its predecessors did. It's probably the saffron up top, the cedar down below, and the vetiver somewhere in between, which situate the florals in the sweet but boozy territory of spiced rum cake, an aroma ascertained through elaborate plumes of cigarette smoke.

Cinnabar (Estee Lauder)

Truly a classic. Woozier then upright Opium, this oriental has dipped into the punch bowl with a little more abandon. You can smell the fermented fruit on its breath, and its fuzzy state of mind is palpable from the other side of the room.

Noel au Balcon

I get pretty weary of the slams directed at Etat Libre D'Orange. The more time I spend with this line, the more I appreciate its artistry and quality. Even it's most ostensibly mainstream (i.e. throwaway) fragrances, like Don't Get Me Wrong, Baby (I Don't Swallow), offer riches worth revisiting. The sense of humor is refreshing and conversational. Why is it that we can laugh at the unintentionally silly and overblown ad copy of estimable houses like Guerlain, while faulting Etat for its open sense of the ridiculous? Why is it we don't bat an eye at horsey Hilary Swank writhing in the cosmos for Insolence, but decry the squirting penis of Secretions Magnifiques, as though the latter weren't the subliminal thrust of the former laid bare? In an industry which serves no higher goal than the bottom line, releasing only what has been test-marketed to death, what exactly is the beef with a house whose nerve is prodigious enough to push boundaries in the form of a fragrance like Secretions Magnifiques? I find it hard to take Etat's detractors seriously.

Noel au Balcon is a subtle inversion in some ways of the seasonal release. Key word release here, as indicated by the stuffed corset of the perfume's accompanying illustration. Noel au Balcon takes the dense cakey comfort food of Five O'Clock au Gingembre and turns it on its nose with perfectly judged touches of cistus and red pepper. It truly evolves on the skin, from sweet to salty, maintaining an interesting floral backbone throughout. Apply it before you meet the family. It will linger until you leave with mandatory leftovers. It has far more gravity than its brethren.

Une Rose

The only other Christmas rose for me. This one is straightforwardly rose, but its wine dregs hint at that half dark, half jolly place the right kind of holiday party can take you. This is rose as high drama--moody, like the emotional baggage you bring to the Christmas table, a state of mind where a butter knife can look like more of a weapon than you ever had cause to notice before. A scent like Une Rose makes all the trivial resentments and longings teased out by the holidays seem as majestic and impertinent as classic opera performed in combat boots.

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.