Diptyque
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The cedar arrives first, sharp and almost dry-cleaning crisp, before sandalwood's creamy facets quickly blur its edges. There's a fleeting lime brightness—more zest than juice—and coriander's odd, almost soapy-clean greenness that hovers for mere minutes before dissolving into the woody base.
The musk begins its softening work, creating that signature powdery halo that makes the sandalwood feel like it's radiating from within your skin rather than sitting atop it. The woods meld into a singular, seamless accord—no longer cedar or sandalwood individually, but a pale, warm abstraction of both. Ginger adds a subtle prickle of warmth, barely there but preventing the composition from becoming too soporific.
What remains is sandalwood's ghost: a soft, skin-like woodiness with vanilla's gentle sweetness providing just enough body to keep it from vanishing entirely. The powdery quality intensifies as the hours pass, creating an intimate, close-to-skin presence that smells more like freshly laundered linen on warm skin than perfume. It's tenacious in its quietness, refusing to disappear but never demanding attention.
Tam Dao whispers rather than shouts, a meditative study in pale woods that Daniel Moliere has rendered with the subtlety of a watercolour wash. The sandalwood—creamy, almost milky in its smoothness—forms the beating heart, but this isn't the sweet, incense-shop sandalwood of decades past. Instead, it's propped up by cedar's drier, pencil-shaving quality and amberwood's faintly synthetic warmth, creating a structure that feels both modern and nostalgic. The powdery accord that dominates the mid-stage comes not from iris or violet, but from the way musk softens and diffuses the wood molecules, like talc settling into skin folds.
What makes this composition compelling is its restraint. The coriander adds a brief, skin-like spiciness without veering into curry territory, whilst lime provides the merest citric lift—a squeeze rather than a pour. Vanilla and ginger in the base are barely perceptible as distinct notes; rather, they contribute to an overall warmth that prevents the woods from turning austere or skeletal. This is sandalwood for the 21st century: less oil-rich and resinous, more sheer and wearable.
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