Beyond the Flame

The pattern for Excentric, one of the new wallpaper offerings, was originally designed by Diptyque founders Christiane Gautrot and Desmond Knox-Leet as furniture fabric.

In 2018, as a guest on Stephen Colbert, writer and satirist David Sedaris—age 61 at the time— famously shared some insights from his commencement speech at Oberlin College. “I started keeping a list of my wisdom. Part of it is, you have to be really careful about scented candles. There’s really only two kinds worth having. And if you don’t get those two kinds of scented candles, you have to go without. It’s a hard lesson to learn,” he shared. One of his brands that made the cut? Diptyque.

As some of us have learned the hard way, not all wax-and-wick vessels are created equal. When it comes to crafting Diptyque’s coveted treasures, the process is much more stringent than what goes into the kind that hold your nose for ransom while in the checkout line of the drugstore.

For starters, it takes two days to make each 190g, 60-hour-burning bougie, which is crafted almost entirely by hand. Fragrance concentrate, wax and wick are all carefully considered and balanced to provide the optimal scent diffusion. Simply translated, it’s the difference between elegantly wafting your home with your signature scent and hitting your guests over the head with it.

The singular names given to each of the 40-plus scents in the candle house’s fragrance library are almost misnomers, as each scent is the result of a careful blend of natural ingredients that together create something inspired by nature but also thoroughly artisanal. Take for instance their best-seller Baies, which is not just the fragrance of blackcurrant berries, but also freshly picked leaves and accents of rose. Even the most novice of candle consumers will appreciate the maison’s scent of Vanille. Here, the scent is given a spicy edge, derived from black vanilla pods, which take months to come to fruition and bear a leathery undertone with smoke accents that give it an almost masculine profile.

Roses and Baies remain two of the brands most popular scents.

But candles are only one of many coveted creations from Diptyque, and their latest creations harken back to the brand’s early days at 34 Rue de St. Germain, when three friends in different creative industries opened a shop and were described as “merchants of nothing, merchants of everything” (imagine a curio filled with finds ranging from French fabric to paper lanterns from Germany to Indian incense). The brand has expanded its offerings in recent years to release everything from ceramic tabletop items and torch-blown glass tumblers to Portuguese porcelain trays and the most exquisite candle holders. And, last month the company introduced its first-ever collection of wallpaper with a series of 10 designs pulled from La Maison’s archives. Within the collection one will find traditional, patterned wallpaper patterns available in 32.8ft x 1.97ft panels, panoramic decor sized 5.9ft x 9.19ft, 11.8ft x 9.19ft, and what the brand is calling Frieze—a wallpaper reminiscent of the wainscoting commonly found in Parisian apartments, available in 18.4ft x 3.28ft panels.

Les Lilas wallpaper, a reproduction of a painting by one of Diptyque’s founders.

All images courtesy of Diptyque.