I can imagine the scene at Hermès corporate:
Jean-Claude, it's time for another garden scent!
Ah, well, I have a vetiver I've been tinkering with...
Sounds divine. Where does vetiver grow? Haiti? No, no, not romantic enough.
Well, it's indigenous to India.
India! Parfait! Lots of warm, rich colors and spices!
Ehhhh, yes, well...
And so, we got an Indian garden - Un Jardin aprés la Mousson. A drowned Indian garden.
Let me take you on a little tour of this garden and its strange flood of notes.
In the first few moments on my arm, Un Jardin après la Mousson smelled like decaying skin and days-old flowers rotting in water. Seriously. It smelled as if I hadn't washed that patch of skin in days.
Then came a pepper note. Followed by a watery melon note. But not the ripe cantaloupe everyone talks about. A green, unripe melon. Unripe yet somehow mushy.
The whole effect was of a world drowned and waterlogged. This is not the after-the-flood rebirth of nature promised in the Hermès ad copy, but the days before, when everything is still feeling hammered and torn by the deluge.
As the scent developed, things seem to dry out, and I got a bitter, woody note, followed by a lemony vetiver mixed with tobacco. At a late stage, hours in, it was a washed-out vetiver with a bitter edge that kept crawling up my nose.
The tobacco went from golden and unsmoked to the blackened, tarry smell of a pipe bowl. And floating in and out of the vetiver-tobacco blend was that vague melon smell.
Melon notes tend to go very wrong on my skin, and it's possible that this scent was, for me, doomed from the start because of the melon. But I have to say, the other notes didn't do much for me, either. Although a nighttime walk in humid air did bring out a sweet and milky floral note that softened the vetiver and tamped down the melon and tobacco (the longose, I take it?). Back inside, in the air-conditioned air, the vetiver reasserted itself.
Jean-Claude, mon amour, if you wanted to have your way with vetiver, why not just come out and say so? This is ultimately what this scent is - a variation on the vetiver theme. If it had been marketed as such, I might appreciate it more. This whole business of linking it to a garden in India just doesn't make sense to me. That is just a theatrical stage, and the other notes merely supporting characters, for the star of the show: J-CE's take on vetiver.
In fact, a name like Vetiver d'Hermès or Hermès Khus would've fit the scent quite nicely. It would've saved people from having to try to make sense of the soaked-Indian-garden fantasy, and forced them to put aside their expectations of something rich and colorful and thick.
Other thoughts about Mousson: Quite masculine in feel. Not in the slightest bit "pretty." An ambient scent. Something you'd smell upon opening a door to the outdoors in a warm, humid climate. Not something I'd especially want to wear or smell on someone else. Minimal sillage. Smells richer on paper and on cloth than on skin. Pretty bottle that doesn't match the scent within.
Now, I know I should be impressed by the olfactory magic trick of being plopped into a soaking-wet place then taken to an acrid and arid place, and on a certain level, I am. That part is pretty darn cool. Kinda like a perfume science experiment. I just wish the magic trick smelled better.
The SAs at Saks crack me up. None of them liked Un Jardin après la Mousson, and one of them tried to excuse it by telling me that French people like "interesting" smells. I told her we/they like interesting good smells, and that I think this one was done with the American and Asian markets squarely in view (mostly the Asian market). Not because it smells bad. It doesn't. But because it is so non-perfumey. Sort of the antithesis of 24, Faubourg. And certainly the least perfumey of the Hermès garden trio.
Actually, if I were looking for a scent to evoke the feel of a garden after a deluge, "watery, vegetal and green," I think I might choose Olivia Giacobetti's creation for Andrée Putman - Préparation Parfumée. It has a boatload of personality, and conveys water and nature in spades.
Editor's Note added 08/02/08: Saks had the exclusive for a while, but now Neiman Marcus has this. The SAs there don't appear to like it any better than those at Saks, which cracks me up just the tiniest bit. Oh, and I edited the top of the article - using the intro I wrote for my Mousson post on PoL.
Well, girl, I'm relieved to see what you think.
Intellectually, I believe that I can appreciate all the various reasons, rationales, artistic gobbledygook, etc.
Do I want to wear it ?
Hell, no.
I'm drowning in Ambroxan, and not in a good way, either.
If I want to die in someone's armpit [ and perhaps, I do !],please let it be a real one, and not patently artificial....
Posted by: chayaruchama | May 27, 2008 at 09:00 AM
chaya, you bottomlined it - would i want to wear it? um, no!
is that ambroxan that made my skin stink like decay? omg.
yes, an armpit - the right armpit - is fine, but not this.
the whole time i kept thinking, what were they thinking - why would they do this - and even, is he trying to sink the company? i was that puzzled by it.
and i know it's silly but i am annoyed by how the juice doesn't fit the bottle! colors like that deserve something more appealing. and i'm not even a bottle person.
Posted by: scent signals | May 27, 2008 at 09:58 AM
Interesting to read!
I think indeed they're going for other markets (certainly not the French!) who are appreciating more airy scents, lighter and thinner and that JCE is doing his take on several things he left on the table as ideas: the cool pepper from Poivre Samarkande, the sparse vetiver/minerals from Terre d'Hermes, the subtle florals from Kelly Caleche, the herbal bitterness of Mediteranee...
Not that that is helpful: indeed it is the least "complete perfume" from the Jardin trio.
And I agree very much that his main advantage (that he is so very vocal, articulate and eager to explain to the press) is working itself against him in this case: had the fragrance been presented without the Kerala story it would have fared better.
BTW, the fragrance is indeed positioned on the men's side on Osmoz as a woody-aromatic. But of course!
(not so in the Hermes boutique though, but those are known for highlighting the latest)
Posted by: perfumeshrine | May 28, 2008 at 07:17 AM
hmmm, well he could've left those on the table as far as i'm concerned.
yes, i saw that osmoz had it listed as masculine while hermès positions it as unisex. i think osmoz is closer to the truth on this, even though i'm not a big fan of "sexing" fragrances. this just reads like a guy's scent. which guy i'm not sure...
if i reframe it as a vetiver, and not a "jardin" scent, i have an easier time appreciating it.
Posted by: scent signals | May 28, 2008 at 12:02 PM