Scented candles are a funny thing for me. I LOVE them during the colder seasons, but come Spring, my candle burning mood is mostly gone. With one exception: Diptyque’s roses (yup, plural). I loved the unabashedly candy scent of last year’s Valentine’s LE candle that made my last days in Shanghai a bit more cheerful, and this year’s Damascena candle also lightens my mood.
Rose – a cliché?
I absolutely love to have flowers around me (the advice to get flowers instead of useless bric-a-brac for your home changed my life), but nevertheless, getting a big bunch of roses feels always a bit – unimaginative and clichéd. Fragrance-wise, though, roses are the way to my heart (well-documented on this site). Rose is, in fact, an astonishing note in a fragrance, and can turn it around completely – you’ll get very different scents if you pair sandalwood with vetiver or with rose, and rose can both lighten and deepen a fragrance.
Unsurprisingly, Diptyque always does rose for Valentine’s Day, and yeah, for me it’s a bit like the lover arriving with a bouquet of roses – not terribly imaginative, is it? But then, I found Diptyque’s Damascena long after Valentine’s Day in a local perfumery, smelled it, and pounced. (There’s also a sister candle to Damascena, called Centifolia.)
And if you’re wondering why I’m telling you all that – it is actually possible to buy those two still, so do read on.
Damascena and Centifolia and Rose and Baies
Diptyque does quite a lot of rose scents. Their best-seller, Baies, is not that much of a rose fragrance for me, but a green blackberry hedge with some rose blossoms intertwined in the leaves, and Rose is a bit too one-dimensional for me.
Diptyque Damascena candle review
Centifolia and Damascena (or Damask) Roses are the two most common roses used in perfumery. Centifolia (the ‘hundred-leaves-rose’), is grown in the area around Grasse, France, and also called Rose de Mai, because it blooms in May, or Painters’ Rose, because many old masters used it in their pictures. The Damask Rose is generally grown in Turkey, Iran or Bulgaria, its named (per Diptyque) ‘in honor of its place of origin. According to folklore, it was brought to Europe during the Crusades, as its name refers to its origin of the city of Damascus. Its dense and luxurious flowers inspired the candle’s container design and package illustration.’
I found Centifolia just a bit too green (the description says ‘fresh’, I say green – and, for me, a bit too piercingly green), so I opted for the honeyed, jammy scent of Damascena. It’s a simple rose fragrance – very full on, very in bloom, with a bit of honey in the centre. Nevertheless, it’s less sweet than you might think it is.
A rose by any other name…
… would smell as sweet? I don’t know. I always think the refined and complex scents is what sets Diptyque apart from other companies. Are they worth the price? Ingredient-wise, Diptyque never uses synthetic fragrances (which can be a good or bad or totally whatever thing, depending on your point of view), hand pours the paraffin wax, and uses lead-free wicks. All that makes a higher price point reasonable. Keep in mind that for a great, fragrant experience, the bigger candles are generally stronger-scented and can fill a big room with their scent, while the small ones may not.
Still available at:
You can get the Damascena candle at Diptyque’s own UK site, at Niche-Beauty, Net-a-Porter, Mecca for Aus/NZ and in Germany at Ludwig Beck or Breuninger.
Please note that this review is not sponsored in any way. We buy products ourselves, with our own money, and don’t accept exchanging goods, or money, for reviews. We are completely independent, and our reviews reflect that.
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