Eau de Pamplemousse Rose (above center) and Eau de Gentiane Blanche (above right), along with longtime favorite Eau d’Orange Verte (in new packaging, above left, and celebrating its 30th anniversary this year), make up the new trio of unisex colognes from Hermès. I went to visit them recently at my local Hermès boutique, and had Pamplemousse Rose purchased and packaged within minutes. One of these days, I need to sit down and figure out the proportion of my perfume spending over the past few years that has been made up of fragrances from perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena — I’m guessing it’s substantial, and certainly it accounts for many of my on-the-spot purchases.

But I’ll start with the good news: I did not need a bottle of Eau de Gentiane Blanche. Amy Verner, writing in the Globe and Mail¹, called it a “haute fresh laundry fragrance, soapy yet subtle”, and that’s right on the money: it’s possibly one of the nicest laundry-clean fragrances I’ve ever smelled, but there’s really almost nothing you could do with a laundry-clean fragrance, haute or otherwise, that would make me want to own or wear it…

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