2 Creation starts with
an encounter

diptyque is a collective:
many elements, one entity.

In the beginning were the founders:
Desmond Knox-Leet, Yves Coueslant and Christiane Gautrot,
who invented it all.
New skills have been added, new contributors brought on board.
This is how, right from its inception,
diptyque has used its plural structure to become one of a kind.

The story begins

New wave

It started, exactly sixty years ago in the so-called Latin Quarter of Paris, the heart of the city’s artistic and intellectual night life. No longer truly post-war but not yet May ’68 – a period of effervescence, yet peace.

Everyone was deep in discussion with everyone else. The talk was of politics and liberty, but also of culture and innovation, and these conversations were of the utmost importance. Philosophers were superstars (Sartre, Aron, Althusser), French cinema was reinventing itself with Godard, Rohmer and Rivette, jazz was all around and prêt-à-porter was getting started.

It was during these years that the trio came together. Lightning struck – on many different levels. The friendship spontaneously developed into a “rule of three” when it came to creating together, six-handedly, and to sharing enthusiasms, fantasies and desires. The itch to create was in their fingers and in their hearts. (“The desire to realise something true” is how Christiane would put it later). A beginning would spring from an idea, a memory would lead to a hunch, one detail would be enhanced by the next or shed fresh light on its predecessor, and so their talents grew greater when combined. Fraternity, spontaneity, modernity. Work in progress.

This was also the golden age of cafés: the boulevard Saint-Germain and the adjacent thoroughfares contained plenty of meeting places, which Boris Vian referred to as “archipelagos.” Some only opened once others were closed: the Rose rouge, the Caveau de la Huchette, the Tabou, the Montana (yes, already!), the Méphisto, where one might come across, say, Albert Camus and Roger Vadim – half club, half salon, and quite possibly based on the model set by a precursor café situated at the intersection of a boutique with two window displays with the rue de Pontoise: the Orphéon.

The Orphéon of the imagination

To mark its sixtieth anniversary, the Maison has chosen to pay homage to this legendary background. The atmosphere has been recreated – although since there is no one left who can personally recall these places, the key requirement was to reinvent them. Orphéon is an olfactory dream.

Olivier Pescheux, a trusted friend, composed his formula like a tableau.

The space itself, dominated by wood: coffee tables, armchairs, shelves behind the counter
displaying, one imagines, a line-up of bottles and ice containers, the dance floor in thenbasement (cedar, vetiver, patchouli).

The drinks, with a sharp note of juniper berries evoking the British spirit served as a long drink with a slice of lemon, a drop of green tangerine (as in a gin fizz?), and a few ice cubes.

The tobacco, which on certain evenings must have formed a sort of fog, at which no one took offence (it was a different time!) is represented by the acrid accents of mastic and galbanum, along with the much smoother accents of honeycomb and rockrose, like fine cigars or Amsterdamer pipe tobacco.

The scent of women, floral or powdery but always complex and potent, ylang-ylang from the Comoros archipelago, magnolia from China, Turkish damascena. Plus the indispensable disruptive surprise: a magnificent, vibrant absolute of Arabian jasmine, like a flash of lipstick in the halflight…

The men, somewhat dandified and often in search of fresh conquest, smelling of musk or amber (but also of cigarettes).

And finally, the lighting that accompanies the décor: a warm, subdued red on an accord of Venezuelan tonka bean and vanilla-flavoured Laotian benzoin. Ambroxan almost to excess: an addiction without risk, albeit not without a certain giddiness…

In four words: fresh, floral, sensual, woody. And, of course, gender-free.

A wink to the Maison's origins

An artistic collaboration

Gianpaolo Pagni

Gianpaolo Pagni was born in 1969 in Turin (Italy), he lives in Paris and works at Pré Saint-Gervais (93).
Graduate from the Orléans Visual Arts Institute, Gianpaolo Pagni creates his stamps and uses them as drawing tools. His work focuses on the dimension linked to memory and trace, using motif and repetition to bring to light a personal archeology, a form of endlessly renewed self-portraits. The process of « reappropriation », through the list, the collection, the object and its imprint, are as many essential elements in his drawing work as in his painting.

His practice also extends through books; Author-illustrator, he created artists' books, dreaming of making the text disappear in favor of images. He creates many, whether unique, printed, painted or stamped, edited, self-edited, bound or not. He collaborates with national and international press (Le Monde, Liberation, So Foot, L'Obs, le Un, Le Tigre, International Herald Tribune, The New-York Times, La Stampa), with many publishing houses, cultural events as well as with prestigious clients like Maison Hermès.

So Orphéon, like all things diptyque,
can beseen as a three-step waltz
(Maison, perfumer, illustrator).

2 Creation starts withan encounter

diptyque is a collective: many elements, one entity.