Into the Garden of Eden
If you are looking for a fresh new scent, look no further than French luxury brand, Hermès. The label’s fragrance line includes popular scents such as Twilly d’Hermès, Terre d’Hermès, and how now introduced Un Jardin Sur La Lagune, their latest launch.
Christine Nagel, the French brand’s perfumer, turned to the Garden of Eden for inspiration for the house’s next fragrance, the sixth in the ‘Le Jardin’ franchise. The Garden of Eden referenced is the one located on the Venetian island of Giudecca, and was named after its original owner, Lord Frederic Eden. This garden, which is permanently closed the public, has gained somewhat of a mystic status, and Christine wanted to see it for herself.
Several requests from Hermès to view the property were denied, but Christine was granted access after penning a handwritten letter to the president of the foundation that now owns it, pleading her case. She visited the garden on January 4, and said of the experience: “When I was finally able to push open the secret door I was immediately struck. I was numb by the cold, fuelled with emotion, and struck by a particular charm. It evoked powerful memories of the sepia photos of the garden I had seen. But the plants I discovered were very real.”
The French fashion house’s perfumer spent 18 months perfect the fragrance, translating every scent from the garden into the bottle. The perfume consists of a rich composite of smells, including: the salt of the surrounding lagoon, the woodiness of its trees, the competing wafts of flora that grow there. After months of work, the end result was a sophisticated blend of jasmine, magnolia, Madonna lily, orange blossom, offset by woodier notes. Speaking of the process, Christine said: “To create this fragrance is to give this garden another life,” says Christine, “an olfactory reality, it is to enable everyone to imagine and to dream of this garden, to enable everyone to open the gate and discover this secret oasis.”
The fragrance is available in Hermès stores and online.
Media: Supplied
