diptyque pays tribute to Mediterranean nature by dedicating its entire summer collection to its inexhaustible source of inspiration. A nature that is simple and authentic and opens onto the sea: the nature of the Mediterranean landscapes, where Yves Coueslant and Desmond Knox-Leet, two members of the trio who founded diptyque, loved to recharge their batteries, and from 1960 onwards, they brought back materials and memories aplenty for use in the creations and perfumes to come.
Summer 2022 sees the emblematic Mediterranean scents highlighted as olfactory reminiscences of the landscapes of Italy, Provence and Greece that the two friends so valued for their unadorned beauty. In the Mediterranean, they found their “landscape of the soul” – the place where they felt most fully themselves.
This is also a location that the young French artist Matthieu Cossé, who has been invited to create drawings visualizing the world of the summer collection, loves to portray: sun kissed landscapes seen from a neoclassical, poetic and colorful view. It was inevitable that he would one day collaborate with diptyque, for any number of reasons. Traits marking him out as a natural choice include his love of color, shared by the Maison since its early days and its very first fabric collections, plus his fondness for gouache and watercolor techniques, which are very much in line with those used by Desmond Knox-Leet and with diptyque’s celebration of the simple, essential qualities of nature.
One summer in the Mediterranean: viewed via the artist’s perspective and imagination, the inspiration for this limited edition collection takes on the form of a celebration, sensitive and poetic. In his own manner, he rekindles the beauty of the light and of the natural world of the Mediterranean. Keeping faith with his own style, he depicts the region’s colors radiating freely, embracing with a spirited gesture the essence of the Mediterranean setting – the sea, the sun, the native flora. He gets through to the essential, just like the collection itself– an amalgam of objects combining beauty, simplicity and utility, reproducing as closely as possible the scents of that sun-drenched soil.
The sun lies at the very heart of Ilio, the eau de toilette of the summer collection, also available as a hair mist. Taking its name from ilios (the Greek word for “sun”), Ilio is a concentrate of summer itself, captured in a bottle – a breath of warm air cut across with addictive fragrances from flowers and fruit trees. Characterised by prickly pear – an emblematic, unconventional fruit from the Mediterranean basin – Ilio will both brighten and freshen up the summer, adding notes that blend bergamot, iris and jasmine.
Celebrating lemongrass – another characteristic summer scent, known and valued for its tangy coolness and its mosquito-repellent properties –two new limited edition scented candles enrich this solar collection: a candle in the classic190g format and its large-format 1.5kg cousin, the latter entirely decorated with illustrations courtesy of Matthieu Cossé. Enhanced with green, floral touches, this candle will be the ideal accompaniment to summer evenings spent alfresco after night has fallen.
Discover the Summer Essentials Collection at ERA Apollon, Limassol & ERA Mall, Nicosia.
