COLLECTION HERMESSENCE

Symbolic of modesty, the violet flower, Viola odorata, cultivates discretion. Everything about it is delicate: its perfume that evokes the springtime of childhood, the fragile curvature of its stem, and its fine petals in a beautiful shade of whitened purple.

The queen of violets is also the queen of this composition by Christine Nagel, Director of Creation and Olfactory Heritage at Hermès Parfums, who has chosen a variety produced exclusively in Tourrettes-sur-Loup in

south-eastern tfrance.

As if challenging the laws of harmony, the creator has combined the demure violet

with cuir Volynka, a material specific to Hermès leather goods that is as intense as it is robust, and vegetable tanned using oak bark.

The violet could have shied away from such a show of strength and boldness. But no.

Elevated by the perfumer’s know-how, on contact with the animal aromas of this powerful leather, the flower comes alive with uncharacteristic fervour, revealing what it had always been: majestic.

This new chapter in the Hermessence collection showcases the eternal violet, which, armed with the privilege of its fragility, willingly takes centre stage. And yet the flower knows that

it owes its new authority partly to the nobility of cuir Volynka.

In a game of hide-and-seek between two markers of elegance in high perfumery, the flower

and the leather take turns to assert their character, interact and equalise with each other, until the powdery softness of the violet blends with the strength of the leather, and they speak with one voice.

HERMESSENCE VIOLETTE VOLYNKA is presented in 200 ml and 100 ml bottles with a purple leather cap. Two matching sleeves are available for the 100 ml size only. One is cut from a powerful and luminous purple leather named “anemone”. The other, a limited edition, is ornamented with marquetry in seven different leathers, its main side symbolising a door opening onto a garden filled with violets.

HERMESSENCE COLLECTION, ELEVATED FLOWERS

Summoning the memory of the material since 2004, the Hermessence collection

is a space for play and absolute freedom for the perfumer, who takes pleasure

in creating unexpected combinations of raw materials that reveal one another. Thus the most delicate of flowers succeeds in competing equally with its partner

– whether noble wood or fiery spice – demonstrating to the doubtful that it has the aura of a heroine.

Among the fourteen olfactory tête-à-têtes offered by the Hermessence collection, three exquisitely delicate flowers, like the violet, reveal their character and uniqueness.

MYRRHE ÉGLANTINE

Combining the gentle dog rose

– a wild flower with an elusive scent that resists capture – with an austere shrub from the arid regions of East Africa: such was the perfumer’s challenge. The warm scent of ancient myrrh elevates the floral, fresh and spicy notes of a dog rose freshly picked from a breezy garden, carrying a promise of seduction on the skin.

CÈDRE SAMBAC

Cèdre Sambac is the happy marriage of a fleshy jasmine and a substantial cedar. Imagine this dynamic wood, revered by the Ancient Egyptians and Romans for its divinatory properties, entwined in languorous jasmine. In this unprecedented accord, the white flower is a thousand times more majestic than we believed it to be, and filled with unexpected intensity.

OSMANTHE YUNNAN

Engaging in a game of seduction are two raw materials grown in the Chinese province of Yunnan: osmanthus, a tiny, elegant flower that exudes scents of apricot and freesia, and the smoked, leathery inflections of black tea leaves.

It took all the skill of the perfumer to balance these two sensitive elements in a fragrance of measured sensuality and invent the unique perfume of a distant land.