Hermès has launched L’Ombre des Merveilles, a new spicy woody oriental flanker to 2004’s Eau des Merveilles. L’Ombre des Merveilles follows 2017’s Eau des Merveilles Bleue…
A delicate custom scent
This includes Bali Barret, overseer of all the house’s women’s offerings, to consult on the colors. (She and Touron have Hermès’s library of 75,000 silk swatches and 900 leather shades, complete with pigment formulas, some around a hundred years old, to play with.) Christine Nagel, Hermès’s perfumer, created a delicate custom scent for the lipsticks. And Pierre Hardy, creative director of jewelry and shoes, designed the graphic packaging, which is made of lacquered metal and Hermès’s “permabrass” hardware (the same that is used on its handbags).
— Hermès moves into makeup with the Rouge Hermès lipstick (24 colors, $67, refills $42). Read more in Is This the Birkin Bag of Lipstick? at Wall Street Journal.
Hermes Twilly d’Hermes Eau Poivree ~ new fragrance
Hermès has launched Twilly d’Hermès Eau Poivrée, a new flanker to 2017’s Twilly d’Hermès…
Hermes Un Jardin sur la Lagune ~ fragrance review
A bit of background: The sixth in the Hermès Jardin series, and the first from perfumer Christine Nagel, who took over as the house perfumer in 2016.
The inspiration: The Jardin series perfumes generally find an inspiration, however manufactured it might be (remember The Perfect Scent: A Year Behind the Scenes of the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York by Chandler Burr?), in some exotic garden someplace else — that is, not in New Jersey (which really does have lovely gardens, but you know what I mean), or your own backyard…
She was bewitched by its abandoned romance and returned through the seasons
She was bewitched by its abandoned romance and returned through the seasons, as she told me, delighted by its poetry and its strange, haunting melancholy. In April, for instance, the pittosporum tree was completely covered with yellow and white flowers, smelling like orange blossom or jasmine, whilst in June, as Nagel recalled, “the magnolia smells so delicate, and of course the odor comes from the sky!” She also loved the smell of the trees’ roots, which cover the ground “like the lines on your hands” because they can’t burrow into the salty earth. The fleshy saltwort, the Madonna lilies, and the smell of the salt air were also amongst the smells that the alchemical Nagel (whose fragrances for Jo Malone included a collection inspired by traditional English desserts) blended together into her fragrance, aptly titled Un Jardin sur La Lagune.
— Perfumer Christine Nagel at the Giardino Eden in Venice. Read more at Hamish Bowles Uncovers a Secret Garden in Venice at Vogue.