Hermès: Prestige Perfumery from a Harness-Maker’s Workshop

“When I write a scent, fragrance materials are my words, and with those words I weave a story. There is breathing, and there are shifts of tone, just as in sentences. Above all, perfume is a construction of the mind.”
— Jean-Claude Ellena, Hermès in-house perfumer, 2004–2016

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Essential Information

• Brand name: Hermès
• Founded: 1837, as a harness workshop
• Fragrance business began: 1951, with the release of Eau d’Hermès, its first fragrance for general retail sale
• Founder: Thierry Hermès (1801–1878)
• Current in-house perfumer: Christine Nagel, who joined in 2014 and has been Director of Olfactory Creation since 2016
• Fragrance production site: Le Vaudreuil, Normandy, France, operating since 1977
• Official website: https://www.hermes.com

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The Founder and the House’s Origins

Thierry Hermès: From Orphan to Master Craftsman

Thierry Hermès was born on January 10, 1801, in Krefeld, in present-day Germany. The sixth child of a French father and a mother from the Rhineland, Agnès Kuhnen, he grew up in a Protestant family that ran an inn. Following the French Revolutionary Wars, Krefeld was then part of the French First Republic, so Thierry was born with French nationality.

His childhood, however, was marked by repeated hardship. War and epidemics took members of his family one after another. When his parents died in 1821, the twenty-year-old Thierry left his hometown alone. Reaching Pont-Audemer in Normandy, a town renowned for tanning, he apprenticed himself to a saddler and began to master the art of harness-making.

In 1828, he married Christine Pétronille Pierrart, with whom he had one son, Charles-Émile. Having completed his training and become a master craftsman, Thierry opened his first workshop in 1837 at 56 rue Basse-du-Rempart, near the Madeleine church in Paris. It made harnesses for horse-drawn carriages. He is said to have conceived the idea of making strong, comfortable and graceful harnesses during an earlier visit to Paris, after seeing working horses suffering in ill-fitting equipment.

His harnesses were finished using point sellier, or saddle stitching, a hand-sewing technique in which two waxed linen threads are drawn against one another with two needles. They found favor with Parisian high society and even with Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. A first prize at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867 made the Hermès name known among European aristocrats and world leaders. Thierry died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1878.

Across Generations: From Harness Workshop to Maison

Thierry’s only son, Charles-Émile Hermès, took over the business in 1878 and moved the shop to 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris’s eighth arrondissement. This address, frequented by wealthy clients, remains Hermès’ headquarters today. Charles-Émile expanded saddle-making and sales, extending the clientele across Europe, North Africa, Russia, Asia and the Americas.

Charles-Émile’s son Émile-Maurice Hermès came to take practical control of the business. Anticipating the age of the automobile, he steered the house toward applying its harness saddle-stitching techniques to leather goods and trunks. He obtained exclusive rights to the zipper technology he brought back from America, introducing the mechanism into leather goods for the first time in France. It became known as the fermeture Hermès, or Hermès fastening. In 1918, the house made a zippered leather golf jacket for Britain’s Prince Edward.

Émile-Maurice had three daughters, who married Robert Dumas, Jean-René Guerrand and Francis Puech respectively. These three sons-in-law advanced Hermès’ diversification: Robert Dumas developed leather goods and silk scarves, while Jean-René Guerrand took responsibility for establishing the fragrance division.

Émile-Maurice summed up his business philosophy as “leather, sport, and a tradition of refined elegance.”

The Birth of the Fragrance Business: A Scent Inside Leather

When Émile-Maurice died in 1951, his sons-in-law Robert Dumas and Jean-René Guerrand took over management. Jean-René had joined Hermès in 1926 and remained with the company for sixty-four years. He established its worldwide export division and became CEO of the fragrance business.

That year marked the true beginning of Hermès’ fragrance history. Eau d’Hermès was commissioned from Edmond Roudnitska (1905–1996), one of the great masters of twentieth-century French perfumery.

“Inside an Hermès bag, a trace of fragrance lingered… Fine leather notes gently enveloped in subtly spicy citrus.”
— Edmond Roudnitska, commenting on the creation of Eau d’Hermès

Roudnitska composed the fragrance with inspiration from inside the Hermès leather workshop: the aroma of leather and spice that rises the instant a bag is opened. It begins with vivid citrus notes of bergamot and petitgrain, gives forceful expression to cumin and cinnamon, and eventually sinks into the animal warmth of civet. Launched for both men and women, it was so avant-garde that opinions were sharply divided from the outset, yet it retains an important place as the starting point of Hermès perfumery.

Roudnitska was a legendary perfumer responsible for masterpieces including Diorissimo and Eau Sauvage, and established his own laboratory, Art et Parfum, in 1946. Besides Eau d’Hermès, his creations for Hermès include Grande Eau d’Hermès (1987) and Hermès Rouge (1988).

From Calèche to Equipage: Establishing a Perfume House

In 1961, another master, Guy Robert, composed Calèche, Hermès’ first fragrance for women. Calèche means a carriage, the very emblem of Hermès. Blending aldehydes, florals and woody notes, it established the model for the house’s feminine fragrances.

In 1970, it was followed by Equipage, the house’s first men’s fragrance, also by Guy Robert. Its name, meaning horse trappings, likewise strongly reflects Hermès’ equestrian roots.

In 1979, Françoise Caron created Hermès’ first cologne, Eau de Cologne Hermès, later renamed Eau d’Orange Verte. Inspired by the scent of woodland wet with morning dew, it brings the sparkling freshness of orange into contact with the depth of oakmoss, becoming the foundation of the Hermès cologne collection.

In 1995, Maurice Roucel introduced 24, Faubourg, named after the address of the Hermès flagship itself. A radiant white floral inspired by the sun of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, it is also known as a favorite fragrance of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Designer Serge Mansau created the bottle to evoke “a silk scarf bathed in sunlight and fluttering in a light breeze.”

The Jean-Claude Ellena Era: An Aesthetic of Subtraction

A decisive turning point came in 2004. At the invitation of then Hermès president Jean-Louis Dumas, Jean-Claude Ellena became the house’s first in-house perfumer, or nez.

Ellena was born in 1947 in Grasse, the perfume capital of southern France. His father was also a perfumer, and one of his foundational memories is picking jasmine with his grandmother on the hills of Grasse and selling it to fragrance companies. At sixteen, he apprenticed at the Antoine Chiris essential-oil factory, later recalling days when he slept on sacks of oakmoss between night shifts. In 1968, he became a member of the first class at Givaudan’s newly established perfumery school in Geneva.

“My first smell memory? When I was about four, the smell of a box of biscuits hidden in the kitchen cupboard.”
— Jean-Claude Ellena

His perfumery philosophy was deeply influenced by Edmond Roudnitska, whom he regarded as a mentor. Reading Roudnitska’s essay “Advice to a Young Perfumer,” given to him by his father, set his direction. Inheriting Roudnitska’s injunction to keep things simple, Ellena developed his own aesthetic of subtraction. While perfumers at the time built formulas from palettes of 2,000 to 3,000 materials, Ellena reduced his to just a few hundred.

“The aim was not to reduce, but to clarify. If you mix several jasmines together, their subtle differences are lost in the final product. What I need is to use the right jasmine intelligently. If I question the place of a note in a formula, it is a bad sign… I must remove it and begin a new trial. A perfume is finished when there is nothing left to take away or add.”
— Jean-Claude Ellena

He nevertheless explicitly rejects the label “minimalist.” In a letter to an acquaintance, he wrote: “I am not a minimalist. That is a misunderstanding of my work. Simplicity is not minimalism. I am trying to bring perception and intelligence into harmony.”

Ellena’s twelve years at Hermès produced one great olfactory story after another. Beginning with Un Jardin en Méditerranée in 2003, followed by Un Jardin sur le Nil in 2005, Terre d’Hermès in 2006, and the Hermessence collection launched in 2004, these creations fundamentally rewrote the house’s olfactory vocabulary.

In a 2014 interview with Marie Claire, Ellena described his relationship with Hermès this way:

“A sacrifice? No, it is a true meeting. I am here to express Hermès.”

Christine Nagel: The “Tactile Perfumer”

In March 2014, Christine Nagel, a perfumer from Geneva, Switzerland, joined Hermès. In January 2016, she succeeded Ellena as Director of Olfactory Creation, and has since been responsible for all Hermès fragrances.

Nagel’s background differs markedly from that of traditional Grasse-born perfumers. Opposite the University of Geneva, where she was studying organic chemistry, stood the fragrance company Firmenich. One day, she saw a company perfumer apply a trial fragrance to a receptionist’s skin. The joy and emotion on the woman’s face, she says, convinced her of the path she wanted to follow.

“But the first answer was no. An absolute no. Forbidden. Because I was a woman. Because I wasn’t from Grasse. Because I was from Geneva. Because I didn’t come from a family of perfumers. Because I had studied chemistry. …But I had a dream. So I found another way.”
— Christine Nagel

As an entry test at Firmenich, she was asked to smell an existing perfume and work backward to write out its formula, a highly advanced skill. This analytical training would later give her tremendous freedom.

“When I think about a fragrance, I imagine it in colors and textures. That grows stronger with every year.”
— Christine Nagel

Looking back on joining Hermès, Nagel says:

“When Hermès contacted me, I was ready for a change. …When Pierre-Alexis Dumas asked, ‘Would you like to join us?’ I was very polite and calm on the outside, but inside there was a tsunami!”

Nagel’s creative process at Hermès excludes any intervention by market research or focus groups. Decisions are made by a very small committee including artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Hermès Parfums et Beauté CEO Agnès de Villers, and Nagel herself.

“I really am doing what a perfumer is meant to do. With no constraints on ingredients, cost or time, I have the job every perfumer dreams of. I have complete and absolute freedom.”
— Christine Nagel

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The House’s Distinctive Commitments

A Philosophy of Fragrance: Creation, Not Marketing

The guiding belief behind Hermès perfumery is encapsulated in words once spoken by Jean-Louis Dumas:

“We have no image policy. We have only a product policy.”
— Jean-Louis Dumas, fifth-generation president of Hermès

Hermès is one of the few major French luxury houses with both an in-house nose and fully integrated perfume production in its own factory. All its perfumes are made at its Le Vaudreuil facility in Normandy, which handles everything from sourcing raw materials and producing perfume bases to bottling and packaging. Operating for forty years or more since opening in 1977, the factory also voluntarily produced five tonnes of hand sanitizer for France during the pandemic in 2020.

There is no compromise in ingredient selection either. Nagel says, “At Hermès, the beauty of materials is at the heart of every métier. Freedom to choose raw materials is an absolute luxury, giving me the freedom to go where nobody else has gone.”

Bottle Design: The Lantern and the DNA of Harness-Making

Hermès’ equestrian roots are vividly present in its perfume bottles. A representative example is the lantern-shaped flacon, whose form recalls the lanterns on horse-drawn carriages. Used across the Cologne and Parfums Fondateurs, or founding perfumes, collections, it expresses each fragrance’s individuality through differently colored glass. On the reverse of the labels are illustrations symbolizing each fragrance by Philippe Dumas, an artist from the Hermès family, designed to be seen through the perfume itself.

The Eau des Merveilles bottle, designed by Serge Mansau, has a distinctive magnifying-glass shape scattered with stars, with orange light shimmering at different intensities. The slender, rectangular Hermessence bottles are topped with saddle-stitched leather caps.

For Barénia, introduced in 2024, designer Philippe Mouquet based the bottle on Hermès’ emblematic Collier de Chien bracelet, itself inspired by a dog collar. Combining crystal-clear curves with a precious-metal plate, it is an object that embodies the house’s leather-and-metal DNA.

Fragrance Has No Gender

Both Ellena and Nagel have consistently held that fragrance has no gender distinction. Ellena explained in an interview:

“I do not use the word ‘unisex.’ I prefer to say ‘something to be shared.’ If you see perfume as art, it is for everyone, and for each individual. The distinction between men’s and women’s fragrance is economic, not creative.”

Nagel likewise says, “Western society has created codes for women and men, but sometimes we need to free ourselves from them.”

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The Fragrance Collections

Hermès fragrances are organized into several broad collections, which the house calls territoires, or realms.

Parfums Fondateurs: The Founding Perfumes

A collection of the house’s historic fragrances, unified by the lantern-shaped bottle, with each creation distinguished by its color and label. Representative fragrances include:

• Eau d’Hermès (1951): By Edmond Roudnitska. The starting point of Hermès perfumery.
• Calèche (1961): By Guy Robert. Its first fragrance for women.
• Equipage (1970): By Guy Robert. Its first men’s fragrance.
• 24, Faubourg (1995): By Maurice Roucel. A favorite of the late Princess Diana.

Colognes Hermès

The cologne collection began in 1979 with Françoise Caron’s Eau d’Orange Verte. Ellena expanded it in 2009 with Eau de Pamplemousse Rose and Eau de Gentiane Blanche. The collection pursues immediate, generous pleasure beyond gender, age and season.

Parfums-Jardins: The Garden Fragrances

Beginning with Un Jardin en Méditerranée in 2003, this series draws inspiration from gardens around the world. Each fragrance expresses an encounter between the spirit of the house, the soul of a place and the perfumer’s inspiration. The table below covers the seven releases through 2023.

Fragrance	Release year	Perfumer	Inspiration
Un Jardin en Méditerranée	2003	Ellena	A secret garden in Tunisia
Un Jardin sur le Nil	2005	Ellena	The banks of the Nile at Aswan, Egypt
Un Jardin après la Mousson	2008	Ellena	An Indian garden after the monsoon
Un Jardin sur le Toit	2011	Ellena	A rooftop garden in Paris
Le Jardin de Monsieur Li	2015	Ellena	A Chinese garden between reality and imagination
Un Jardin sur la Lagune	2019	Nagel	A garden on Giudecca island in Venice
Un Jardin à Cythère	2023	Nagel	The landscape of Kythera, Greece

Walking through a garden beside the Nile, Ellena was captivated by the scent of green mangoes in a grove of mango trees. This became the starting point of Un Jardin sur le Nil. The creative process is documented in detail in The Perfect Scent by New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr, a book also known for revealing the behind-the-scenes story of Ellena’s work at Hermès to the world.

The 2026 Un Jardin sous la Mer extends the idea of a garden underwater. In March 2026, Nagel traced its inspiration to a coral garden encountered while snorkelling off Taha’a. Rather than reproducing a smell perceived underwater, she drew on surrounding impressions, including tiare and coconut, to imagine how that marine landscape might smell. Here the journey encompasses both sensory observation and invention.

Hermessence

Created by Jean-Claude Ellena in 2004, this exclusive collection takes its name from the essence of Hermès. It is sold only in Hermès’ own stores.

“They are a collection of olfactory poems, combining restraint and intensity, freely exploring new dimensions of emotion.”
— Hermès official description

The concept is clear: bring together two distinctive materials and assemble them with the precision of saddle stitching. After Ellena created thirteen fragrances, Nagel added further works from 2016 onward, including Musc Pallida and Oud Alezan, drawing on inspirations such as her travels to Morocco. Slender bottles crowned with saddle-stitched leather caps form the collection’s unified identity.

Terre d’Hermès

Introduced by Ellena in 2006, Terre d’Hermès is a landmark among the house’s men’s fragrances. Built around the relationship between humanity and the earth, its structure is fruity, spicy and woody: grapefruit and orange at the top, a spicy heart of pepper, and a woody base of patchouli and cedar. Ellena is said to have been inspired by the novels of Jean Giono to express the profound bond between people and nature through scent.

Nagel continues to approach this monument with both respect and courage. For the latest creation, Terre d’Hermès Eau de Parfum Intense, introduced in 2025, she began with the primal image of a volcanic eruption and used two rare materials for the first time: natural licorice extract and roasted coffee-bean extract.

“Terre d’Hermès is a monument to me. It takes a certain courage to approach it.”
— Christine Nagel

Eau des Merveilles: Water of Wonders

A women’s fragrance created in 2004 by perfumers Ralf Schwieger and Nathalie Feisthauer. It was inspired by ambergris, a rare material originating in the digestive system of whales. Schwieger said, “Ambergris is a magical ingredient. It evokes the biblical story of Jonah and the whale.” Although woody-amber in character, the fragrance has a distinctive transparency with a mineral, salty quality. Subsequent variations, including Elixir des Merveilles and L’Ombre des Merveilles, have spread outward like a constellation.

Twilly d’Hermès and H24

Among Nagel’s major recent collections is Twilly d’Hermès, released in 2017. It was inspired by the free spirit of younger generations who wear Hermès scarves in their own ways, as belts or headbands.

“There is boldness, fantasy and color within Hermès. I thought, this is very youthful, yet young people feel a little intimidated about entering an Hermès boutique. So I thought that by twisting the materials, perhaps I could find a new way in.”
— Christine Nagel

In 2021, she introduced H24, Hermès’ first new men’s fragrance in fifteen years. An innovative aromatic green that gives narcissus absolute from Grasse a masculine expression, it was created with a conscious affinity to Véronique Nichanian’s menswear designs.

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Incidentally…

• Ellena does not wear perfume. To preserve his neutrality as a perfumer, Ellena is known for not wearing fragrance at all. Even his favorite Terre d’Hermès is used only “about three times a year,” and he kept using the same old bottle for years. His family is also a family of perfumers: his father, his brother and his daughter Céline Ellena are all perfumers.
• Nagel’s habit of “following” people. When walking down the street, Nagel says that if she catches a perfume she created on someone passing by, she cannot help turning back, moving in front of them and smelling it again to be sure. “They do not know me. But what they are wearing on their skin is a part of me.”
• Hermès orange. The orange packaging that symbolizes Hermès was actually adopted by chance because of material shortages under German occupation during the Second World War.
• An Hermès scarf sells every twenty-five seconds. Although not directly related to perfume, this figure for the same house’s scarves illustrates the depth of trust in Hermès craftsmanship.
• The scent Ellena dreams of. Asked in an interview what perfume he would like to create next, Ellena replied, “A perfume of the wind.”

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