at draws on the brand’s iconic ovals, its reflections dance upon beige walls in a play of light and shadow as a background to home fragrances, scented objects, candles and skincare products. An Indian marble, called “forest green” because it is the colour of foliage and its veins recall the shape of roots, makes up a discovery counter, as well as a mural on which the house’s Collection 34 is presented.   Parisian ambience Collection 34 springs from a desire to recreate the ambiance of the Diptyque shop at 34 Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris. It is a complex fragrance featuring notes of Diptyque’s classic perfumes: the dark berries and luminous roses of L’Ombre dans l’Eau, the sensual tuberose of Do Son, a veritable journey around the Philosykos fig tree…perfumed narrations delicately structured around natural scents. Next come other fragrances: Benjoin Boheme, Eau Mage, Kimonanthe, Opone, then objects of the perfume world: candle holders of ceramic, embroidered metal and blown-glass, scented tapers, bouquets of glass rods, scented sculptures – all created from encounters with designers and artisans. A perfume is a universe, and Diptyque says it likes to be its storyteller. Each scent is a landscape, real or imaginary, structured with olfactory touches just as a painting is structured with colour. This link between the art of scents and pictorial art with the works of Desmond Knox-Leet and the interpretations of contemporary illustrators in tribute to his creations, has inspired a one-of-a-kind perfume ritual. Like an artist’s paint box in black lacquer, it presents all of Diptyque’s eaux de toilette and eaux de parfum in distinct olfactory categories. Each bottle is reflected in the mirror behind it to better reveal the journeys inscribed with black lines in the oval illustrations on its back. In front of each perfume is a delicately marbled container enclosing not a colour but a pure expression of its scent. It opens as if by magic as soon as the visitor takes hold of it, and the perfume is released with all its complexity. Beauty rituals The brand’s body and facial products are inspired by beauty rituals from Asia and the Mediterranean. Entirely handmade, the scented candles meet the same demanding standards as the personal fragrances. The one-of-a-kind range encompassing about 50 scents is an ode to fruits, flowers, trees and spices. Since its founding half a century ago, Diptyque has cultivated an art of living. It offers a Parisian harmony made up of scents and refined objects. It sprang from the friendship of interior decorator Christiane Gautrot, painter Knox-Leet and Yves Coueslant, a theatre director and set designer. Although they set out originally to design fabrics, their love of travel and discovery soon widened their outlook. Eclectic objects gleaned during their journeys came to decorate their shop windows, and in 1963 they created candles in tribute to their shared taste for subtle but evocative scents. All this took place in Paris at 34 Boulevard Saint-Germain, in the shop with two windows resembling two panels of a painting: a “diptych” (or diptyque in French) that gave the firm its name. Diptyque covers 423sqft (39sqm) at Takashimaya Shopping Centre in Orchard Road.