Power; Tiare My Love

We think of a floral perfume as a romantic essay; a letter of love to the flowers we love to wear, but nothing is more romantic than a soliflore: a perfume that is built around the ideals of a single flower, trying to recreate the absolute essence of the whole of it. Diptyque have a small but exquisite collection of these.

Since 2014 they have taken the idea of this concept and have released several soliflore perfumes highlighting when a particularly good harvest of a key flower is available.  Their first was a celebration of the Mimosa, followed by Jasmine in 2015 next in 2016  was the wonderful Rose de Mai and now in 2019 c0mes the delicate and uniquely harvested Tiare flower, and the scent Essences Insensées Tiare Flower.  To bring this to life they approached the superbly talented perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin who has collaborated with them on many occasions, to be the nose for this specific scent.

The flower is a far cousin to the gardenia. Gardenia taitensis, and is also referred to as the Tahitian gardenia or Tiaré flower. It is made up of dark, dark green leaves and creamy white petite lobed flowers, which once handpicked, are left to sit unopened in oil for around 15 days before any extraction can be made. Unsurprisingly, this makes it a very expensive ingredient in perfumery. Seen as a national flower in the French Polynesian and the Cook Islands it is native to the highland shores of the South Pacific where it is seen here in very hard regard.

Image troy mckaskle

For this fragrance, the growers from the Tahiti island revealed to the perfumer, a rare extract derived from a very small crop. The ingredient of an exceptional quality offered olfactive nuances of the newly-picked flower, fresh from the fields that surrounded the sea.

The flower itself smells rich, creamy, and sweetly perfumed, reminiscent of, say,  tuberose in some sense, but this flower is far more genteel and ladylike.  It is plush, heady and feminine (although the flower is worn by both men and women in Polynesia)  and is intensive yet has a veil of sheerness to it.  It is one of those oh so perfect white florals but not nearly as common as many because of price dictates. But unlike other white flowers, it has a sort of airiness that lifts it and stops it being potentially sickly.

So Fabrice Pellegrin has masterfully taken the flower that is his ideal. There is a green fresh element whilst he imagined scent of the nearby coastline bringing an ozonic airiness to the fore; think a soft sea breeze on a summers day.  It is the hint of ozonic tilt that gives this perfumery it mastery,  present are all the wonderful delicate aspects of this elegant flower yet in the hands of a pro this fragrance has the lightness of touch that well only a master can…master.

Essences Insensées in held in a beautifully crafted glass vessel which sets it apart from everything else and as with previous launches diptyque drew on the archives of Waltersperger, one of the last glassmakers in France who works, as by tradition, by hand.

Find out about  Essences Insensées Tiare Flower and other fragrances for body and home at www.diptyqueparis.com