Christmas Gift Shopping part 1: Scented Candles

In the countdown to the most festive season of the year Perfume Shrine will pop shopping enabling posts to help you wade through the vast selection and steer you into the most interesting and worthwhile choices.

For part 1 I was enchanted to see that Diptyque perfumers have collaborated with the creative design duo Tse Tse to render a limited edition of 3 scented candles, each presented in either 70 gr (burn time of around 20 hours) retailing for 28 euros or 190g (burn time of 50-60 hours) retailing at 52 euros each. Personally, I'd be thrilled if a guest brought me as a housewarming gift a jar with Encens des Indes!
But here are the three scents in detail.

Écorce de Pin
The woody and Christmasy scent of snow covered pines mixes with hinoki wood, a Japanese variety of cypress used for furniture. The scent of the candle hints at camphoraceous and smoky notes, including galbanum, cedar and patchouli.

Encens des Indes
Purple like a bishop, this spicy and floral tinged candle mingles franckincense (powerful with citrus tones and pepper nuances softened by woody and balsamic notes) and myrrh, poised between incense and rosemary, a musky, smoky and slightly pungent scent. The gifts of the Magi. A lemony rose alongside spicy floral notes reminiscent of carnations complete the harmony.

Orange Chaya
This brightly hued candle envelopes the room in spices. Sweet without being thick, it evokes the warm roundness of an orange, then the freshness of cardamom, rising, an exotic tea mixture with notes of quince, ginger and cinnamon. We are projected into the flavors of winter.

Fragrant Combinations for Summer: From Green Freshness to a Journey to the Mediterranean

Diptyque suggests the following layering of their famous candles in their summer bulletin. I have found that if you're really after a little more "intimate" fragrance combining you can do that with their room sprays too (where applicable), if you want to experiment with fabric or skin, or you can try single note essence oils if you have those at hand, to see how they come out for you. The fun is in the experimentation and summer is a period when the natural world contributes with its heat and sun to bring out some unexpected nuances in even the most seemingly straightforward essences. So why not give it a try?

pic from the company's 50th anniversary celebration

Here are the Diptyque recommendations, with some additional commentary by me. Feel free to expand on your own!

Figuier & Choisya is recommended to give a fruity, green and lightly floral atmosphere, like dreaming underneath a tree in the lazy afternoons of summer.
Jasmin & Coriandre combines the freshness of the spice to the greeness of the living vine of the white flower.
Feuille de Lavande & Cypres is the meeting of true minds: the purple of French Province and the green woody of Italian Tuscany and Cyprus.
Menthe Verte & Verveine is a refreshing, herbal, uplifting combination for the hot days of a heatwave.

pic from the company's 50th anniversary celebration

The Diptyque candles currently retail for 68$ for the big size and 28$ for the smaller one.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine:
Fragrant Combinations for Fall: from the rustic to the spiritual,
Fragrant Combinations to Lift the Winter Blues,
Fragrance Layering: a Layman's Guide on How to Layer Perfumes,
Fragrance Layering: Tips on How to Combine Scents, by Serge Lutens and Francis Kurkdjan.

Fragrant Combinations to Lift the Winter Blues

It was a while ago I mentioned some fragrant combinations for autumn using Diptyque candles and room scents, promising to come back with more. Diptyque offers a small guide of scent combinations of its famous candles for scenting your space -a sort of olfactory landscaping- to create your own atmosphere, evoking a different mood than the one currently roaring and howling outside. Actually Diptyque have championed the art of scent layering since their very beginning. These below are of a different ilk than previously, less rust & gold and more a breath of fresh awakenings, like grains sprouting under the snow. But even if you're bent on the holiday spirit and enjoy the warming effluvium of the classic scents of the season, the new limited edition 2012 collection in its chic containers (below) brings on a smile to the lips.

via mercinewyork.com

Oliban and Sapin Dore are the very spirit of the holidays: the cool frankincense reminds us that there is a liturgical background to the festivities, while the warm and clean pine scent is complementing all the natural, outdoorsy smells of the season.

Gardenia and Santal are classic Diptyque candles and by combining the lush scent of the waxy-petaled white flower and the soft milky note of sandalwood you get a bridge from winter to spring, an optimistic reminder that good things lie awaiting.

 Verveine and Menthe Vert (i.e. lemon verbena and green mint) is a classic office and work desk combination that is mind-clearing. It helps me get my thoughts off the loom and gloom outside and into focusing to the projects I have to accomplish before dusk sets.

 Roses and Lierre when burnt together are delightfully reminiscent of an English garden by the river; the pink roses are dewy and trembling under the coolness of the approaching evening, the ivy leaves are reinforcing the vegetal, cool aspect.

 Maquis and Figuier is probably the combination I'm feeling most nostalgic about, reminiscent as it is of the scent of the Mediterranean countryside, filled with the burnished copper of immortelle, the sapling of the fig tree and its bittersweet smelling leaves. Summer will come, in the end.

Fragrant Combinations for Fall: From the Rustic to the Spiritual

The art of scent combining is a fine and precarious one at once. A delicate blend can be completely overtaken by a more forceful presence, while a rich, hefty aroma can become overwhelming when mixed with another scent, creating more of a stuffy atmosphere than a delicious, inviting one. When dealing within these parameters it's probably an art best left to the professionals or to indulge with simple/single-note scents, but some gentle guidance can end up prompting you to experiment with good results. After all, it's nothing inescapable, right?

via self.com

Diptyque offers a small guide of scent combinations of its famous candles for scenting your space -a sort of olfactory landscaping- reminiscent of the autumnal season, all burnished gold and rust. The combinations are calculated to bring on a third presence, often vaguely familiar or reminiscent of specific fine fragrances which I will quote below and urge you to sniff to try and catch their nuances anew. Actually Diptyque have championed the art of scent layering since their very beginning.

For instance, their recommended combination of Feu de Bois and Pomander brings to mind the Christmas festivities with their smoky, log-fire note coupled with the orange & cloves spice of the classic pomander. It's a layering of notes that reminds me of Noir Epices by Frederic Malle with its intense clove and darkness, of Coup de Fouet and Poivre by Caron as well as of the classic, pre-reformulation Opium by Yves Saint Laurent.
Opoponax and Maquis brings on the softness of the resinous note of opoponax (that hazy flou so compelling in Guerlain's Shalimar and Habit Rouge and indeed in Diptyque's own home spray Opopanax) alongside the rustic tonality of the countryside with its woody aroma full of everlasting flowers, rich like maple syrup oozing off a hungry spoon. The combination echoes the newest fragrance issued by Diptyque, Volutes, inspired by a memorable voyage the founder took from Marseilles to Saigon.
Roses and Patchouli of course is a time trusted combination, almost a classic, the two smelled together creating the impression of dark, leafy roses unfurling to eternity...The melange is explored in the pre-empting Voleur de Roses by L'Artisan Parfumeur as well as many other modern fragrances, from Lady Vengeance (Juliette has a Gun), Portrait of a Lady (F.Malle) and Hippie Rose (Heeley) to Idylle Duet Rose Patchouli (Guerlain).
Cyprès and Myrrhe are evocative of a Mediterranean spot darkened by the bitterish tinge of the resinous, Middle-Eastern myrrh. The common resinous quality of the cypress wood and the -prized since antiquity- "tears" combine into an ambery-woody scentscape that is introspective, grounding and spiritual. Molton Brown makes a hand wash combining these two notes with musk, making for a little Persian exoticism in your bathroom.

The season is full of opportunities for scented adventures and a little playfulness goes a long way. On a subsequent post I will reveal what the staff at the Diptyque boutique suggest as scent combinations for creating quite another mood... ;-)