Today, I'm wearing Eau Capitale. Diptyque is calling this an homage to the city of Paris, its hometown. And since Paris is the capital of France, I'm guessing that's what the name is referring to, Eau Capitale.
Now, it shouldn't be a surprise that any fragrance that's a love letter to Paris would be a chypre, since the chypre style is generally considered to be a very classical French style. A chypre will have a bergamot top note, and Eau Capitale does. Specifically, they're calling it a verte bergamot, which is the green of the bergamot fruit, which gives it this extra zest and brightness in the beginning. And something about that bergamot combined with pink pepper gives it this electrifying sparkle. It just kind of dances up at the top.
Chypres will have an oak moss base, typically, but in this case, the base is patchouli. The perfumer is Olivier Pecheux, and he also did Tempo for Diptyque. And that is a patchouli-forward fragrance, so I feel that he does patchouli so well. He just gets what it can do and how it combines beautifully with other notes.
At the heart of Eau Capitale is Rose Damascene in three forms: Rose Essence, Absolute, and Concentrate. That's a lot of rose. But if you're thinking there's going to be a rose soliflore, it is not that. It is not a blousy, big bouquet of roses. It's not that kind of a scent. There's an alchemy that happens when these materials are combined, and it's very squarely a chypre, and it smells like a chypre.
A number of years ago, Diptyque came out with a fragrance called Opone, which is also a spicy rose chypre. And there are some similarities, yet this is unique. It's not Opone. Opone was more spice forward, and I got this immort
