L'Ombre dans L'Eau Eau de Parfum 
Diptyque (2012)

This was my favourite from the Diptyque line and it is still the one that I remember the most fondly. The greenness of the cassis reminds me of a greenhouse where the smell of the soil and moisture is contained. Then throw in some rose and black currant to give it sweetness and fruitiness. There's not a lot of difference between the EDT and EDP.

If you love green scents, this is a must try. Performance is pretty good, but if you want to save a bit of money, you could probably opt for the EDT. This belongs in my top 20 fragrances of all time.

Blackcurrant is the name of the opening blast - the fresh and not very ripe fruit, with the leaves in the background. A good dash of redcurrants emerges transiently too.


Soon the Damascus rose arises as the second part of the lead duo, again a young and fresh rose, which takes the lead after the first hour or two.

Towards the end some white musks are added in.

I get moderate sillage, excellent projection, and eight hours of longevity on my skin.

A bright, fresh, and uplifting spring scent, which is proudly floral, but whose sweetness in never thick or cloying. Whilst not a soliflore, it is a tad linear though, but the quality of the ingredients is very good. 3.25/5

Surprising crisp green garden perfume with amazing longevity and excellent light rose just cut stem notes. Very vegetal in the opening which opens up to a very steady and calm floral. L'Ombre dans L'Eau EdP eventually settles to a slightly sweet floral on my skin, but remains crisp on a paper strip, so this might be personal body chemistry bringing the sweetness out.

As the day wore on the scent improved. Overall very impressed.

L'Ombre dans L'Eau Eau de Parfum by Diptyque (2012) doesn't stray very far from the original 1983 eau de toilette, and is also composed by Serge Kalouguine, a longtime foundational perfumer for the house. I've said before that something feels more honest about the way this house approaches niche perfume compared to some others, as they're not trying to sell you on a gimmick at an inflated price, or over-package "luxury" with an unverified tale of nobility at the cost of a mortgage payment for some smelly water. Instead, Diptyque offers a reasonably more-expensive and unique alternative to the doldrums of designer composed-by-marketing fragrance styles which seek to be all things to all people and therefore end up being nothing that's best for no one. The original L'Ombre dans L'Eau (1983) took a backwards approach to rose perfume design, starting with the ancillary notes and ending with the rose instead of being a rose out the gate that dried down to a supporting cast like most chypres do, and that hasn't changed with this eau de parfum. Also, there probably isn't enough difference here to warrant owning both, so it's an either/or scenario with this one.

The overall vibe and purpose of L'Ombre dans L'Eau Eau de Parfum is to be a richer and darker experience overall, and this is achieved by adding in a richer vegetal muscone note (a musk molecule) and damask rose in place of the brighter standard Bulgarian variety found in the EdT. A huge galbanum blast still greats the wearer in the opening, alongside blackcurrant leaf and blackcurrant bud, adding a tiny bit of juiciness to the formula. The darker damask rose kicks in almost right away, and becomes the core of the scent as it does in the original version, but no longer is this sharing space with petitgrain, but rather that deep green musk note. The muscone blends with the dark rose and some other aromachemical magic (I swear some Iso E Super is in here), since oakmoss is no longer viable in doses high enough to make the original formula work as an EdP. The final skin feel is hours of discrete, dark, dry, musky rose like dandy chypres of the 80's but with a modern cleanliness. Wear time is over 10 hours but sillage is actually milder here than the EdT. Best use is casual wear in spring through early fall, and overall this feels perfectly unisex, or at least as unisex as a rose perfume can be depending on your cultural preconceptions.

The biggest key difference is the darker, smoother, slightly more-masculine effect that the switch out of rose types and base types has on the scent profile. Ultimately, this is still L'Ombre dans L'Eau and all about green rose that focuses on the rose for most of the wear. People who complained the rose was too sickly bright, candy-like, feminine, or common-smelling may prefer this EdP over the original, but if a rose scent that is all about the rose sounds a bit too linear or boring to you, then you won't find much improvement here. I actually prefer L'Ombre dans L'Eau Eau de Parfum just a little more to the 1983 EdT, because The Perfumer's Workshop Tea Rose (1973) has always scratched my itch for a bright and stemmy lucid rose chypre focused on realism, and is much cheaper. In Eau de Parfum form, the artistic embellishments actually give me something to gravitate towards and consequently more reason to pay the price of purchase, but you still may want to sample first. Thumbs up.

The Parfum opens much the same as the EDT with it's blast of greenery reminiscent to a Florist Shop.
Still a bit tooth-aching in drydown, however a bump of Citronella and leafy greens adds a sharper edge to allow better development of a Musky Rose.
Not really my cuppa and my rating is a mild Thumbs up.
I will take the Ambroxinized abstract Amber Nuit instead.
Better yet, January Scent Project's Burvuvu, which explores the Florist shop Rose greenery in a forest of Cedar and Fir.