Diptyque's classic florals blossom into digital bouquets

Still life of two bouquets, one blue and one orange — (Image credit: diptyqueparis.com)

Everything old is becoming new again for Diptyque. The French fragrance brand has commissioned digital floral artist Bas Meeuws to refresh six classic floral fragrances through his photographic collages of blooming bouquets.

For each perfume, Meeuws has created vibrant visual arrangements inspired by the floral compositions of the scents themselves. In his hands, the heady tuberose of Do Sun, inspired by summers spent in Indochina, are realised in ripe blooms and verdant stalks that explode out of their delicate china vase. While the tangy orange scent of Eau des Sens becomes visible in bright citrus coloured blossoms peppered with purple juniper berries. Each bouquet is different, but all are united in the elegance of their execution.

Still life bouquet against a purple background

To create these unique arrangements, Meeuws photographs individual flowers and then digitally builds them into bouquets. The final images are reminiscent of Baroque still life paintings but captured in a distinctly modern format. In that way, Diptyque's and Meeuws' practices once again overlap. Meeuws takes that classical form but reinvents the medium, in much the same way Diptyque cultivated antique scents and aesthetics to create a contemporary brand.

The series, entitled ‘Impossible Bouquets’, is a celebration of the near magical ability of perfumers and painters to transcend the boundaries of time and create, in their bottles or on their canvases, an eternal version of nature. The perfumer can gather a variety of ingredients and distill them into scent that, while derived from natural world, smells like nothing that has existed before. The painter, in this case Meeuws, does the same by gathering disparate flowers together to make a striking, unified image.

Still life bouquet against a bright green background

Bas Meeuws digital bouquets will be featured on limited edition packages of the six scents – Do Sun, Eau des Sens, Eau Rose, L’Ombre dans L’Eau, Eau Moheli, and Olene. It’s a distinct collection that, like a painted flower, can last the test of time.

INFORMATION

diptyqueparis.com

Mary Cleary is a writer based in London and New York. Previously beauty & grooming editor at Wallpaper*, she is now a contributing editor, alongside writing for various publications on all aspects of culture.