Thursday 16 June 2011

REVIEW: 'Un Jardin Sur le Toit' by Hermès


Oh dear...  My reverence for Mr Jean Claude Ellena has been seriously shaken by his latest creation for Hermès - Un Jardin Sur le Toit.

I'll happily admit to being a JCE fanboy.  It's not that I believe he can do no wrong.  I just find myself loving or at the very least appreciating all of his work.  His artistry.  His light, joyful touch.  His whispered evocation of mood or geography.

Either he's taken his eye off the ball or the commercial imperatives of Hermès have focus-grouped him into submission on this one.  Ellena's scents are often deceptively simple - just when you think you've understood the road they're on, they swerve into a different territory and you realise there was a whole lot more to the journey all along.  I'm afraid Un Jardin Sur le Toit is just simple.

It opens with an almost offending smack of fake apples - the kind of apple that flavours cheap confectionery.  The kind of scent that you know should be apple, but isn't at all.  As that slowly exits, the rose takes over.  Not a pretty, dew-soaked or photorealistic rose but a nanna's handwash tea rose.

And that's about it.  No sign of the promised earthiness.  No Ellena subtlety that I could find.  And I tried.  It dries down to an almost-pleasant, vegetal musk but remains too contaminated by that horrid rose to enjoy.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

          [By ANDREW]

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