Dzongkha

L’Artisan Parfumeur launched Dzongkha on 15 September 2006, in fifty and one hundred millilitres. The composition falls to Bertrand Duchaufour, who had signed Timbuktu two years earlier for the same house.

The third journey

The series holds in three juices. Bois Farine opens it, Timbuktu comes two years before Dzongkha, which closes it. Robin, who runs Now Smell This, places all three under the same hand and recognises shared materials from one to the next in the drydown.

The name is that of the official language of Bhutan, a kingdom wedged between India and China. Duchaufour travelled there and brought back matter for a story rather than a list of flowers.

What the house says

The launch copy describes a smell of monastery stone and incense, worn leather, the warmth of hearth fires. To it the house adds a wild tea with milk, peony and lychee, a woody heart dominated by vetiver, cypriol and iris.

The house today places Dzongkha in La Collection, its permanent range, and presents it as a woody unisex perfume. It sums up the intent in a single word: spirituality.

A bottle the house had just changed

Robin notes that Dzongkha is the first L’Artisan she bought in the redesigned bottle, and judges the cap too heavy, close to a bolt head. The house describes the container on none of its pages: the remark remains her own.