The Bold One
Female Singapore|July 2023
The House Of Hermes Has Always Moved To Its Own Whimsy. Take Its Latest Fragrance, Un Jardin A Cythere, Which Is Part Of The Cult Parfums-jardins Collection. Conceptualised With The Theme Of "Astonishment" In Mind (It's The Big Idea Behind Everything That The Brand Creates This Year), This Delightfully Wild Scent Combines Notes Of Fresh Pistachios, Olive Trees And Sun-toasted Grass To Evoke In-house Perfumer Christine Nagel's Memories Of The Greek Island Kythira. During A Recent Visit To Singapore, The Soulful And Good-humoured Nose Tells Keng Yang Shuen About Its Unusual Beginnings And More Unexpected Ways In Which The French Maison Dreams Up Fragrances.
The Bold One

Un Jardin a Cythere can be said to be a pandemic baby. Tell us more about how you came up with the scent.

“When (Hermes artistic director) Pierre-Alexis Dumas said it was time to create a new fragrance for the Parfums-Jardins series, I retrieved this memory that I had of Greece and wanted to recreate through this perfume a garden on the island of Kythira. I started to organise a trip there (for research), but Covid-19 struck and it became impossible to travel. This left me with two possibilities: I could wait for the pandemic to end or I could create this Greek garden from my memories of Kythira. Like a painter who looks at a landscape and then returns to his studio to paint it, the end result might not be perfect, but that’s okay. I just went about creating Un Jardin a Cythere by trusting my nose and my memories.”

What did – and do – you remember so fondly of Kythira?

“I love to visit islands by sea and my first memory of Kythira when working on Un Jardin a Cythere was of seeing its landscape from a boat … Upon arriving, I visited one of its gardens and I remember encountering several different sensations. The first occurred when I was standing under an olive tree: The sun was shining through and there were crickets buzzing. As I walked, the dry grass – blonde in colour – made a crunchy sound. The second sensation came as the wind blew and filled my nose with the smell of dry herbs. This surprised me, as one usually has to bend down to smell the plants in a garden, but on Kythira, the wind brings the scent to you. This very memory is what I’ve tried to bottle in Un Jardin a Cythere.”

Walk us through the perfume’s key notes then.

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