Diptyque’s Shady Garden on the Water

07/22/08 13:01:23

L’Ombre dans l’Eau’, or ‘Shadow on the Water’, a fragrance by the house of Diptyque, was created for the brand in 1983 by Serge Kalougine, a famous French perfumer of Russian origin. For a long period of time, he worked for another renowned French perfume house, Fragonard. L’Ombre dans l’Eau is a romantic fragrance with a beautiful name, which was inspired by a shady river garden.

When choosing a fragrance for hot summer days, it seems very natural to choose that refreshing and unusual composition.

Traditionally, summer fragrances are associated with citrus, aquatic and fruity notes. Diptyque offers a wide range of summer fragrances, and that particular creation is built around blackcurrant leaves and Bulgarian rose.

Blackcurrant is as well-known as it is useful. Most of the plants’ parts are used for multiple purposes, medicinal or culinary (e.g. for making jams, juices, compotes or marinades).

Leaves and buds of the blackcurrant give off a very pungent yet pleasant aroma – it’s fresh, green with a sweet and spicy note - and they make wonderful fragrant tea.

That solid green and very original aroma is very much alive in L’Ombre dans l’Eau – a rare fragrance that truly showcases that common yet rarely used perfumery note in all its glory.

The smell of the blackcurrant bush, which I truly enjoy in the wild, opens the composition. At first, it is rather blunt, green, a little bitter and even a tiny bit astringent, all because you feel the freshly ground leaves and the just broken branches of the plant. Soon enough though, the blackcurrant opens up its green notes and adds an entire bouquet of fragrant nuances into the mix: green and sharp, soft and woody, fruity, balmy and spicy.

After such a bright and cheery opener, we encounter her majesty the rose: tender and light, its sweet flowery notes intertwine with the fruity sweetness of the blackcurrant, which had been barely noticeable before. Yet, the blackcurrant simply refuses to play second fiddle to the flower. The rose and the blackcurrant become one, you can clearly feel both and yet they mix so harmoniously that you can no longer distinguish between the two!

The fragrance is as refreshing as a tall glass of water on a hot summer day, although the composition is not the least bit aquatic in character. Despite that fact, the fragrance creates a steady impression of a sunny garden set off by an intricate lace of tree branches’ shadows, a certain greenish coolness and the water somewhere nearby.

To myself, this is an example of a simple yet clever creation, which goes right to the bottom of the luscious, yet often clandestine and intimate scents of Mother Nature.

Author: Jeca (jeca)
Fragrantica Member