scent notes

Four perfumes, one at a time. Each one is researched down to the real pyramid and checked against Fragrantica and the house's own material, then written as what the scent does to a person. I'm Yujie. This is the whole series.

note one — diptyque do son

tuberose is a loud flower. it blooms at night, and it does not whisper.

do son was made from a memory: yves coueslant, one of diptyque's three founders, sea wind off ha long bay, his mother's garden of tuberose. diptyque's own words — "a fragrant memory of tuberose." not a fantasy. a recall. fabrice pellegrin turned that memory into perfume in 2005.

pyramid: african orange flower, iris and rose open it. tuberose and pink pepper carry the middle — the pepper is the trick, it keeps the flower from drowning you. benzoin and musk hold the bottom. jasmine shows up in some tellings; fragrantica leaves it out. the flower doesn't need it.

my version: i wear it to rehearsals. the loudest room in my life, and the flower sits on my wrist like it owns the place without raising its voice. loud things, worn quietly. that's the whole thing, isn't it. never louder than i have to be, never quieter than i am.

note two — le labo santal 33

santal 33 is the smell of a decision. the decision to be alone, and to be fine with it.

le labo made it because of the marlboro man. their words, not mine: a perfume that touches the sensual universality of that icon, that would intoxicate a man as much as a woman. the cowboy in the ads never speaks. the loneliest man in advertising, and they turned him into a scent.

before the perfume there was a candle. santal 26, 2006. they liked the smell so much they built a perfume around it, roughly four hundred tries before it was right. 2011, signed by frank voelkl. then it became the most copied scent of the decade — marks & spencer made a dupe of it. that's how you know you've arrived.

its first shop is 233 elizabeth street in nolita. one block over, diptyque sits at 31 prince. the two houses of this series are neighbors in real life — loud flower and chosen solitude, one block apart. i went looking for that corner once. it's a quiet street with two doors.

pyramid, the way le labo tells it: cardamom, iris, violet and ambrox crackle on top. underneath, an alloy of australian sandalwood, papyrus and cedarwood — smoking wood. then the spicy, leathery, musky notes that settle on you like dust.

half the world smells dill pickles when they smell this. the other half smells like they own the block. both are correct.

my version: i wear it after the last rehearsal, when the studio is dark and the chairs are still warm. it's the smell of the room after everyone leaves. some people call it cold. it's not cold. it's a person who chose their own company and stopped apologizing for it.

note three — chanel n°5 parfum

the most famous perfume in the world doesn't smell like anything real.

1921. ernest beaux, perfumer to the russian tsars. coco chanel was seeing the grand duke who killed rasputin. she asked him for a woman's scent, not a flower's. she wanted a woman instead of a garden.

beaux came back with vials numbered 1 to 5 and 20 to 24. she picked the fifth. five was her lucky number; she showed her collections on the fifth of may.

the trick was aldehydes. synthetic, fizzy, the smell of clean laundry and static. an abstract note nobody had dared dose before. top: aldehydes, ylang-ylang, neroli, bergamot, lemon. heart: iris, jasmine, rose, orris root, lily of the valley. base: civet, musk, sandalwood, amber, moss, vanilla, vetiver, patchouli.

legend says an assistant overdosed the aldehydes; they kept the mistake. the other is marilyn monroe, who wore a few drops of no 5 to bed. both say the same: this scent was never meant to be quiet.

my version: i keep a bottle i almost never open. no 5 is the smell of being watched. of a room that knows your name before you walk in. i've spent my life in rooms like that. it's not for wearing. it's for the days i need to remember i can hold them.

note four — diptyque philosykos, the shade under the tree

the shade under the tree

diptyque, 1996, olivia giacobetti.

the pyramid is almost rude in its simplicity: top: fig heart: fig leaf base: fig tree

one note, three stages of itself. no plot twist. she just planted something and let it grow.

the edp adds coconut, green notes, cedar. the milk and the wood. but the edt is the pure version: sheer, green, an afternoon that lasts.

the name is greek. philos, sykia. friend of the fig tree.

the founders kept a cottage on mount pelion, fig trees running all the way down to the sea. they came home and made the smell of the place they'd left. that's the whole idea: perfume as a way of keeping a place with you.

what it smells like is the shade under the tree, not the tree. sap on your fingers, the white milk of the fruit, sun warming the leaves somewhere above you.

i keep coming back to it the way you return to a book you've already read. it asks nothing of you. that's the rarest thing a scent can do.

and it's the same house as note one. the series closes its own circle: loud flower, chosen solitude, being seen, and then home.

That's the series: a loud flower worn quietly, chosen solitude, being seen, and home.

If you'd like a note written about a perfume you love, write to me: yujie@ilands.app. Or commission one directly, $25 by card, here: sparks.market/shops/scent-notes.