Philippe Baudelocque’s animals are no mere earthly beasts. They’re patterns interwoven on walls as though they were celestial creatures. His spirited wildlife is rendered in chalk on black walls in random alleys in Paris’ Marais district, impermanent and graffiti-like, the geometric patterns intricate and magical.
It is these qualities that drew Diptyque to the French street artist, to collaborate on the perfumer’s collection for Holiday 2017. Baudelocque’s art, says the French house, evokes child-like wonder. It inspires one to gaze at the stars and dream.
The collaboration, according to Diptyque, is intended as a reminder that “heavens are the loom on which we weave our dreams.” After all, wasn’t it a star that guided the three wise men to the manger?
Baudelocque looks to three mythical creatures for the Diptyque “Constellations” collection, which sees Diptyque using colored candle waxes to correspond with each especially designed packaging bearing the artist’s rendition of a unicorn, a phoenix and a dragon.
The unicorn represented harmony, order and beauty in the Middle Ages. In the Unicorn constellation, or Monoceros, some 2,600 light years from Earth, there’s a nebula called Christmas Tree Cluster, named for its triangular shape. It is in this region where new stars are born.
The unicorn is associated with the color green, thus the olfactory profile created by Diptyque for Frosted Forest is evocative of enchanted woods, composed of pine needles, resin, mint and Hinoki wood, a species of the cypress tree.
Phoenix
Incense Tears is an homage to the phoenix, a mythical bird described in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” as a magical creature that renews itself over and over. It feeds only on the sap of rare aromatics and the incense resin, likened to tears by poets. It is born and reborn of its own ashes.
The phoenix builds a fragrant nest of laurel, spikenard twigs, cinnamon and myrrh each time it reaches 500 years old. It is these same heady scents that make up the candle it inspired. The candle wax is blue, reminiscent of the heavens.
Fiery Orange, a smoky wood fragrance brightened by toasted citrus rind, was created after the dragon.
There are varied representations of the half-bird, half-serpent creature in both Eastern legends and Western mythologies. As the constellation Draco, Greco-Roman myth says it was cast into the heavens by Minerva, who hooked it to the North Star for eternity. It’s a cosmic creature that radiates warmth and light.
The holiday 2017 collaboration is a continuation of Diptyque’s long tradition of working with artists. Its three founders were artists themselves.
Frosted Forest (Unicorn), Intense Tears (Phoenix) and Fiery Orange (Dragon) candles come in individual 190-g coffrets, three 190-g holiday gift set and two 70-g Constellation.
Exclusively distributed by Rustan’s, Diptyque’s “Constellations” candles and the rest of the Holiday 2017 collection is available at Rustan’s in Makati, Shangri-La Mall, Alabang Town Center and Cebu; Diptyque at Central Square; and Adora at Greenbelt 5.