Time, not material wealth, is modern living’s most precious commodity.
To introduce French perfumer Diptyque’s revamped hourglass fragrance diffuser, Le Sablier, Rustan’s tapped some of Manila’s most prominent interior design personalities last week to design personal spaces where they would choose to spend an hour and just savor the moment—60 precious minutes to reflect and meditate, unwind, or just be.
The personal corners—by Mia Borromeo, Anton Barretto, Tessa Alindogan, Marissa Lopa, and Ivy and Cynthia Almario—were sort-of-metaphorical representations of the 60 minutes it takes for the fragrance in a Diptyque Sablier to travel from one glass vessel to the other.
Sablier, hourglass in French, was first introduced in 2012, a fragrance diffuser shaped like an hourglass with plastic vessels on both ends. At the center was a porous stone on which the scent was dispersed via a process called cold diffusion. It took 20 minutes for the liquid fragrance to travel from one vessel to the other.
Five years hence, Le Sablier has been redesigned by a company called Servaire & Co. into an object that is not only a fragrance diffuser, but one that looks closer to an objet d’art—the kind that won’t look out of place in a professionally designed space.
Diptyque Sablier, to roll out in May, is now made entirely of glass, with glass vessels on the ends, and the long, glass center sheathed in perforated, lace-like gold metal, its design of which was inspired by the swirls of the incense burner in the brand’s old label.
The glass vessel containing the fragrance comes in different hues for each of the best-selling scents: Baies (berries), Figuier (fig tree), 34 boulevard Saint Germain (green leaves and black currants), Roses, Fleur d’oranger (orange blossom) and Gingembre (ginger).
Not just cosmetic
The improvements aren’t just cosmetic: “It took us five years just to improve the fragrance intensity,” said Juliette Gras, Diptyque’s area manager for Asia. The porous stone has been replaced with a wick that diffuses the scent. Instead of 20 minutes, it now also takes an hour for the liquid to travel from one end to the other, meaning the scent suffuses the air longer.
One sablier is ideal for a 20-square meter space, but it can also work in a bigger area if you prefer the scent lighter. It’s best placed by a window, or by a fan or air-conditioning vent.
One sablier lasts typically for three months, and can be refilled once. “We want a long-lasting object, but the technology limits us from changing the refill more than once,” said Gras. “But all the glass parts can be recycled, and every sablier is collectible,” so you can integrate them with your home décor after use.
Candles, for which Diptyque is known, are different from diffusers, Gras said. “Candles create this cozy, intimate environment. A sablier is more decorative, and it has a more intense scent,” she explained.
“The advantage of cold diffusion is that it preserves all the notes of a fragrance, even the most volatile ones. When you burn a candle, the most volatile notes disappear, so it doesn’t smell the same.”
Like Diptyque candles, the sablier scents don’t disintegrate easily, even if they’re left unused for extended periods.
The new Diptyque Le Sablier will be available in May at Rustan’s Makati, Shangri-La and Cebu; Adora and Central Square.
