Fragrance Notes
Fig LeafUn Jardin en Méditerranée
Hermès Un Jardin en Méditerranée Eau de Toilette is the perfume that started the Jardin series, and twenty years on it is still the one most people name first. Jean-Claude Ellena composed it in 2003, and the three recorded materials explain its reputation. Fig leaf leads, green and milky with the bitter sap smell you get from breaking a stem, and it was an unusual thing to put at the front of a perfume at the time. Lentisk follows, the resinous scrub of the Mediterranean coast, dry and sticky and faintly piney, and it gives the whole thing its sense of place. Pink laurel adds a pale floral sweetness that softens the resin without turning the perfume pretty.
What Ellena does with those three is make something that smells of a place rather than of a bottle. It is green, dry and shaded rather than bright, and it has none of the sweetness that usually comes with summer perfume. Toilette strength and a composition this transparent mean moderate longevity. Expect a couple of hours of clear presence and a quiet trace afterwards, and apply it properly rather than sparingly. It reads as unisex and it is at its best in heat, in daylight and anywhere near the sea. Twenty years of imitation have not dated it, which is the real test for a perfume of this kind. If you only ever try one entry from the series, this is the one to start with. It still sells steadily to people who found it on holiday twenty years ago.
The house behind it was founded in Paris in 1837 by Thierry Hermès, a maker of harness, and remains in the family six generations later. It began making perfume in 1951 and now runs several collections, the Jardin series among them.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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