Reviews of L'Ombre dans L'Eau (1983)
by Diptyque

Unique opening. Red fruits marmalade still bubbling in the pot, with a touch of white rose petals and a hint of sweet citrus (similar to the one that opens OYEDO). Very sweet and intense feminine mid notes where the Bulgarian rose leads the way to the woods of the base. Great Longevity. Not a mainstream but worth at least a try.

Green floral pee.

I wanted to love this one, I really did, but that remains my first and last impression.

For a while I've opined that I'd like to see a perfumer's take on a local wild flower that smells pleasingly sharp from a distance, and up close... like L'Ombre dans L'Eau.

As it turns out, I really do not want to smell like that at all.

Live and learn.

As for the fragrance itself, it's complex and well made, and has very good longevity and moderate sillage.

It starts with a very green, very sharp opening, it almost hurts it is that sharp. As you rush to get the supplies to wash it off it mellows a little and the green becomes a nice wet and damp smell and the rose comes out more. It's a very floral perfume with mostly rose that tingles, combined with the wetness and damp greens it smells beautiful but it is a tragic beauty that cries a lot.

Not for me.

first its like shock for rose, green, nature. Then it gets better. Allso like other Diptyque scents, not so parfymlike.
Light scent.

The Baron de Charlus once told me: 'On one occasion, I dreamed that I was drifting in a canoe with Marie Antoinette down a stream near the Palace of Versailles. She held aloft a bottle of Diptyque's L'Ombre Dans L'Eau, all the while singing raucously out of tune, her silhouette shadowed in the water, surrounded on both banks by greenery and roses.
"Ah, a nice ironic metaphor, Your Majesty," I remarked. "For, like your singing, Diptyque's L'Ombre Dans L'Eau provides us with a decidedly out of tune rendition of roses on the riverbank. Whilst I would not go so far as to agree with that poet who asserted that vegetation always bored him, I find this certainly to be the case with L'Ombre Dans L'Eau. A crude and tedious production, do you not agree?"
"Rum and vinegar!" chanted the Queen, "Rum and vinegar for me!" "No, you imperial twerp," I assured her, "rum and vinegar are nowhere in evidence here. Humdrum roses and banal greenery. Do try to get it right!"'