French fragrance house Diptyque has introduced L’Eau Papier, a scent developed in collaboration with French Perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin and artist Alix Waline. The eau de toilette comes in 50ml and 100ml formats. It is now available in selected Diptyque stores in global travel retail.
L’Eau Papier pays tribute to paper, a blank slate which represents the beginning of all types of creativity. It also celebrates the creativity of the maison and its three founders: Desmond Knox-Leet, Christiane Montadre-Gautrot and Yves Coueslant.
In English, L’Eau Papier translates to water and paper. The name symbolises the collaboration of Pellegrin and Waline which brings nose and hand together.
The fragrance is centred around a sesame seed heart and rice steam accord, balanced with floral mimosa, cereal and ink accords with a musk base.
“Creating a perfume for Diptyque is like writing a book,” said Pellegrin. “You have to have a story, an introduction, a structure – the primary materials that echo each other to form a narrative.
“For L’Eau Papier, I started with one initial ingredient, grain – in particular, sesame, in the form of extract of roasted sesame seeds. This is the surprise element in the fragrance: I chose it to evoke the novel scent of ink and to add a delicate flavour to the scent.
“I enhanced this by working in musky notes to heighten the sensual aspect. Then I added floral mimosa notes with gentle, powdery properties, to supplement the gentle note of paper. The uniqueness of the cereal and ink accords, blended with the sweetness of white musks, creates the scent of paper – and this combination is what defines the fragrance. I’ve tried to convey the subtle, sensitive interaction when ink is applied to a sheet of paper through an overdose of musks.”
Waline is a French artist trained at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and the Ecole de la Cambre in Brussels. Her evocative black and white illustrations are a contrast to the traditional illustrations used by Diptyque, as there are no recognisable figures or sceneries but instead impressionistic abstract compositions in black and white.
On the front of the label, Waline created varying intensities of brush strokes to represent the different emotions involved in creating a work of art. On the back of the label, Waline features an ink-wash that represents the gentleness of paper grain and white musk, while tightly packed strokes represent the fragrance’s rice steam accord. Fine furrows symbolise the wood accords while small, diluted dabs of ink evoke the vibrant mimosa note which was added for extra sweetness.✈
