Best Tempo by Diptyque Alternatives & Similar Perfumes

Chaco is the second largest primary forest of Latin America, called the "impenetrable forest" for its incredibly dense formation. This Paraguayan forest is the only place in the world where gaiac wood grows, known locally as palo santo. The region is also prized by perfumers as source of petitgrain essential oil, as well yerba maté tea leaves. Chaco the fragrance is a cologne style built around a refined tea structure. Perfumer Alexandra Monet placed the petitgrain and maté in conversation with each other, heightening each other’s mellow greenness in the process. Palo santo, with its woody, salty and smoky facets, brings warmth and sensuality, resulting in a unique unisex signature with lightness and modern elegance.

The name means “sinful loves”, but there’s no sin in loving a perfume as irresistible as Amori Peccatori. This parfum deposits a quick kiss of fresh grapefruit and pink pepper before getting straight to the point: a plush pillow of orris, tonka bean and vanilla. The base of patchouli, amber and animalic musks lets people know you mean business.

Perfumer: Maud Chabanis

A self-possessed perfume for a person who doesn’t need anything, but craves everything. This is excess with control, 70s-era Bianca Jagger wearing Halston, lighting up the Studio 54 dance floor. Carine is a fiercely chic patchouli with an ample gardenia and jasmine cleavage, trussed in a corset of vetiver. Sighs of rose and amber sail through the trail of this Dominique Ropion composition. Confident, elegant, insolent.

Grande Ile blends the bounty of Madagascar — vanilla, pink pepper berries and black pepper — into a sensual and comforting spicy amber. This award-winning scent blends a warm ambery accord with clove, caramel nuances and a rich woody bouquet. Contrasting notes of dry cedar, creamy vanilla, and resinous touches create depth and intrigue. Grande Ile’s enveloping trail unfolds gently on the skin, revealing evolving facets throughout the day. Depending on who you ask, this intriguing beauty moirés between Oriental lilies, a vanilla sauna, and a smoky souk.

Nosy Be... sounds like a motto for an inquisitive perfume lover. It is, however, the name of a tiny island north of Madagascar. It's an island specializing in the production of patchouli, ylang-ylang and other magical fragrance materials for the perfume industry.

Patchouli Nosy Be is a tribute to the tropical humid shade loving plant that when distilled lends an ambery, dark, leathery and almost chocolate aroma - patchouli.

Naturally, it's the precious patchouli from Nosy Be in the perfume in the company of dense vanilla, dusty schinus molle and dry sandalwood.

Memories of the Golden Temple in India. A warm leather caress enhanced by a resinous hug of labdanum, further softened by Cashmeran. Incense adds a smoky spark, while patchouli and cypriol supply the earthiness.

Perfumer: Mylène Alran

Still Life in New York is a perfume built on contrast: cozy and warm notes are set against cool and fresh materials.

The photo for this smellscape was taken by an artist who only shoots cities in the snow. She might be trying to capture that feeling of being snug while it’s snowing heavily outside.

The perfume design is toying with the same idea. Cozy warm notes of saffron, leather, smoky birch tar and vetiver are highlighted by a generous portion of cool clary sage and violet leaf.

The perfume feels like standing by a window in winter to peep at the falling snow and being able to feel both the cold ambiance coming from the glass and the warmth of the house in the background, the fireplace, steaming tea and cashmere blanket.

Perfumer: Jérôme Epinette

Photographer: Vivienne Gucwa

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The Sniff on Flash Back in NY:
"Imagine that you are walking along a city street in the winter. The air is cold, crisp, making your lungs tingle as you breathe it in. You’re wrapped up nice and warm but the end of your nose is cold. Up ahead is a youth in a battered leather jacket smoking a marijuana cigarette and you get a second-hand whiff of it as he exhales a plume of smoke. That’s exactly what this perfume reminded us of."

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Perfumer: Christophe Raynaud

A moonlit leather made with velvety violet leaves and smooth cool orris, all studded with cardamom, dry cedar and spicy earthy cypriol.

In the Beso trio, Beso Negro ("kiss of the darkness") represents the sleepless nights of the busy holiday island: velvety darkness, golden lanterns, cooling sea breeze, stars, and sand.

Chambre Noire reveals itself from the shadows using the spotlight of the vibrant top note of peppery schinus molle before presenting its dark woody heart of dry patchouli and sweet incense. This shadowy gem rests on a soft cushion of prunes, violets, vanilla and musks.

Masa is the Arabic word for a one-of-a-kind diamond, and this EdP embodies the diamond’s luminosity through a balance of herbal freshness and ambered wood notes. Masa opens with a crisp combo of bergamot and grapefruit highlighted by the warm spice of ginger root. Mirabelle, a sweet golden plum, becomes the focal point, its honeyed floral charms suspended in a radiant amber syrup of cardamom, vanilla, guaiac wood and patchouli. A stealth violet leaf, a throwback to vintage elegance, steers Masa towards leather.