Have you ever experienced a fragrance you’ve had to actually warm up to? One that you wrinkle up your nose at the first time you take a sniff but give it a few minutes and you feel like its the best thing you’ve worn all week? I was like that with Volutes.
Volutes was a new scent released by Diptyque late last year and its taken me a while to warm up to it, as you can tell. It is a rather interesting sort of scent, as is the name (which is a real word btw not made up 😛 ) ‘Volutes’ as a noun and adjective refers to a coil or the scroll-like swirls that adorn columns. It also refers to whorls, swirls and tendrils usually seen with burning incense or tobacco. Granted, the latter is not very popular these days, but it forms the back story for Diptyque’s Volutes fragrance.
The scent is inspired by a transatlantic journey taken by one of the 3 founders, Yves Coueslant from Marseilles to Saigon. There were exotic ports of call at Port Said, Djibouti and Singapore and Volutes draws inspiration from scents experienced during this journey – woodiness of panelled salons, spiciness of the exotic middle and far east, citrus notes of the mediterranean, floral notes of the exotic perfumes, and the distinct tobacco scent of cigarettes. All these meld into a heady, woody, spicy warm scent, evocative of an age of elegance and of exotic travels. It feeds the wanderlust in my soul and since I love travelling so much, the story appeals to me.
The scent however, took some time.
