Yves Coueslant obituary
One of the three founders of the international perfume business Diptyque
парфюмер создал 22 аромата для брендов: Diptyque, Lancetti

When François Mitterrand, the former French president, visited Diptyque, the small Paris shop round the corner from his home in St-Germain-des-Prés, he would insist on queueing up with other customers to pay. This was remembered with admiration by Yves Coueslant, one of Diptyque's three founders, who has died of cancer aged 87. From this first shop, opened in 1961 to sell fabric and artisan goods, Diptyque has grown into an international perfume business – perhaps best known for its line of 50 scented candles – with 23 shops in eight countries, including four in London.

A lifelong socialist, influenced by the ideals of William Morris, Coueslant did not set out to create a perfume house. The second of three sons of Jean Coueslant and Renée (nee Blarez), he was born in Paris, but spent his early life in Indochina, where his father was head of the legal department of the Banque de l'Indochine, in the Tonkin region of Vietnam. After returning to France and graduating from the École du Louvre, Yves eschewed the business career his father envisaged for him, working as a portrait painter, set designer, interior decorator (with clients including Jean Cocteau, Jean Marais and Michèle Morgan), theatrical manager and actor.

In 1949, aged 23, he was appointed tour manager by the Romanian actor Elvire Popescu for her company, France Monde Productions. He acquired a heavy goods licence, learned parts, managed tours and adopted a different stage name for each production. He later joined the Compagnie Edwige Feuillère and played opposite Feuillère in La Dame aux Camélias. Ever resourceful, he once successfully negotiated with the mafia when the theft of costumes threatened an Italian tour.

He also managed tours of the Moscow State and Peking circuses. In 1956 he helped to bring the Stanislavsky Ballet from Moscow to the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, where they performed Swan Lake. At the end, he slipped on to the stage with the dancers whose job it was to make a sheet of parachute silk billow to simulate the storm that would swallow up Odette and Siegfried.

A Diptyque candle
A Diptyque candle. Photograph: Michel Cecconi
In 1961, backed with a loan from his father, he decided to leave the theatre and launch an enterprise with two friends – my uncle, Desmond Knox-Leet, an English painter who had worked at Bletchley Park during the second world war before settling in France, and Christiane Gautrot, a designer of textiles and mosaics who had attended the École des Arts Décoratifs. The pair had been designing fabrics together for Sanderson and Heal's. The three shared values, and a similar aesthetic, with an emphasis on imagination, integrity and independence. "We were not business people but wanted to produce things of beauty and quality we could be proud of," said Coueslant.

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Based in a former café at 34 Boulevard St Germain, they concentrated on selling their own fabrics. They also designed and sold coloured candles to complement the fabrics. In 1963 their candlemaker, Jean-Claude Bullens, suggested they try scented candles (rare at the time) and the first three – hawthorn, cinnamon and tea – were launched that year. The fabrics failed to find favour with customers – despite one being used as the backdrop for a televised address by General Charles de Gaulle – and the operation changed tack to stock a range of exclusive, often handmade, products sourced from their travels. For this eclectic, tasteful mixture, which included wooden toys, kaleidoscopes, pomanders, Welsh blankets, model theatres, pot pourri and ties, plus tea towels and tablecloths from a young designer, Laura Ashley, the creators were dubbed "purveyors of trifles" in the 1964 Gault et Millau Paris guide.

There were also distinctive necklaces made by Knox-Leet and Gautrot in the workroom/office above the shop where Coueslant handled all the correspondence on a manual typewriter bought from an army surplus store. "We started small, did everything ourselves, and slaved for years to pay off our debts," he said.

Finances were often precarious, particularly in 1968, when the footfall was greatly reduced during the student demonstrations and the founding trio remembered their eyes running all summer as a result of the tear gas. But that was the year that Knox-Leet, who had a fascination with scent dating back to his childhood in Menton, persuaded his partners to make their own toilet water. Inspired by a 16th-century recipe, L'Eau, aimed at both men and women, proved successful. It was followed in 1973 by Vinaigre de Toilette, then by L'Eau Trois (1975), Virgilio (1990) and Philosykos (1996).

The business took off, with more perfumes and scented candles developed with "noses" including Olivia Giacobetti, Olivier Péscheux and Fabrice Pellegrin, and the house found an international following, while remaining close to its original aims. It never advertised and the partners decided that even perfumes that made a loss should be kept in stock for those few customers who had become attached to them.

After the sudden death of Knox-Leet in 1993, following an operation for appendicitis, Coueslant took over the design of the signature black and white labels, and Mohamed Lataoui, another friend, became managing director. He introduced computers (previously the possibility of a fax had been viewed with trepidation) and opened up new markets and partnerships. Shops were established in Boston, San Francisco and London.

In 1995 Coueslant went to Vietnam in search of the landscapes of his childhood and the trip inspired Tam Dao toilet water (2003) and Do Son (2004), for which he drew the labels.

In 2005 the business was sold to Manzanita, a private equity firm based in London, but Coueslant remained involved in the creation of new scents, the most recent of which, Volutes, developed with Pellegrin, was inspired by the long sea voyages Coueslant made with his mother between Marseille and Saigon during childhood. He continued to live above the shop he created and could often be seen sitting in a corner there.

He is survived by his brother, Michel, and niece, Christine.

• Yves Coueslant, businessman, born 10 June 1926; died 29 October 2013

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