Tagged With ‘Cuir d’Ange’

Hermès

Cuir d’Ange

27 April, 2015

The latest addition to the Hermessences range, created by in-house perfumer Jean-Louis Ellena for Hermès and launched in 2014, Cuir d’Ange is, as its name suggests, a rather ethereal take on the smell of new leather – appropriately enough for a company that started out making riding tackle.

Inspired by a phrase in Jean le Bleu, a 1932 novel by Jean Giono – a kind of French Thomas Hardy – Ellena explains that, for Cuir d’Ange, ‘Using the smells that are my words, I wanted to write a poem to rekindle the love duet between leather and the skin. Its softness and lightness, its tension and its caress. Heliotropes and hawthorn, leather and musk.’

This particular leather smells slightly sweet and rather papery, a bit like skin, which I guess makes sense. I’d like it more if didn’t also include the faintly sweaty smell of hay, which reminds me of another Hermès fragrance, Narcisse Bleu (the hay smell coming from narcissus flowers), but like the other perfumes in the range it’s subtle and sophisticated if, arguably, a little too polite: smart without being particularly sexy. Which, when you come to think of it, makes it a perfect complement to an Hermès suit and tie. But oh for a touch of vulgarity!