Diptyque Tam Dao Eau de Toilette

Diptyque opened in 1961 on the Left Bank, a small Paris shop of fabrics, wallpapers and decorative objects run by three friends: the painter Desmond Knox-Leet, the theatre designer Yves Coueslant and the decorator Christiane Gautrot. Candles came before perfume, and perfume, when it arrived, kept the shop's habit of being personal rather than strategic. Tam Dao is the clearest example of that. Diptyque states on its own product page that the fragrance revisits a childhood memory of Yves Coueslant, one of the founders, and points to the forests and holy temples of Vietnam and the smell of sandalwood burned in them. The house credits no perfumer for it, then or now.

The composition Diptyque publishes is short: sandalwood, cedar, cypress and myrtle. On skin it opens green and resinous, cypress and myrtle giving a cool, faintly camphorous herbal snap with a trace of rose keeping the edges soft. Within twenty minutes the sandalwood arrives and simply stays, creamy and milky and slightly sour in the way real sandalwood is, wrapped in dry cedar and a little rosewood. Spice and amber sit underneath rather than on top, and a clean musk carries it out. There is no sweetness to speak of and no smoke; this is wood as material, not wood as atmosphere.

It reads as unisex without trying, and it is one of the few sandalwood fragrances that holds up in heat, since a humid Durban afternoon cannot make it heavy when there is nothing heavy in it to begin with. Wear it to work, or when you want to smell like a considered room rather than a statement.

On performance, be realistic. This is the eau de toilette: quiet, worn close, five hours or so, and it stops reaching outward once the opening has passed. Diptyque later introduced a Tam Dao eau de parfum, denser and longer-lasting, so it is worth knowing which concentration you are buying. The eau de toilette is the original and, for many long-term wearers, still the better balanced of the two. Diptyque publishes that the bottle is refillable at participating boutiques.