Eau Duelle is Diptyque’s new unisex fragrance. The description — a fragrance that follows vanilla on its journey along the spice route — and the notes1 both sounded perfect. I’m fond of Diptyque, anyway: I love the vintage-look black and white packaging, and they happen to make two of my favorite reading-in-bed perfumes of all time: Philosykos and Tam Dao.
When I reviewed their last fragrance, Vetyverio, I noted that it started “out bright and fresh and energetic”, and that the dry down was “an exercise in subtlety”. The trajectory here is quite similar. Eau Duelle’s opening is vibrant: it smells just like a vanilla gin martini with a twist of citrus peel. Then the spices come on fast, with a lovely overload of cardamom, and shortly after that there is a nice whiff of black tea and a whoosh of incense.
Then it all sort of quiets down…
One litmus test of a store’s success in New York City is the frequency with which its logo shopping bags are spotted on the street and on the subway. I’ve noticed quite a few Sabon bags being carried and reused for other purposes by my fellow commuters, so I decided it was time for me to revisit one of this company’s local boutiques. I’ve visited Sabon a few times before, but I usually left empty-handed. Some of the products and scents just didn’t appeal to me, and others bothered me slightly by looking too similar to items from other brands (