Few journalists can say they’ve lost count of the number of encounters they have had with revered Hermès perfumer, Christine Nagel, over the years. Yet, here I am in her leather-clad presence, atop a building in the heart of Paris’s 8th arrondissement—a chic district steeped in French history. Although a laboratory and office, Nagel’s panoramic, apartment-like space brims with warmth and creativity. Like her, it is engulfed with light and the potential for magic and mischief. I sink into the sofa, like a child eagerly awaiting the next instalment in her favourite heroine’s story. Face aglow, Nagel reveals how the Hermès Barenia, her latest perfume and the 27th for the house, came to be. The story writes itself.
The Hermès Barenia: A creation of the mind
“When I started at Hermès, I knew straight away that I would make a chypre. For me, chypre is the most elegant, timeless structure there is. And when you love a chypre, you love it your whole life. But in order to construct this Hermès chypre, I had to get to know the Hermès woman. I understood that these were women who trusted their own taste and instinct. It is similar to those exceptional women like Nancy Cunard or adventurous explorers like Alexandra David-Néel and naturalist Isabella Bird—women who chose their lives, trusting in their own instinct much more than they chose their husbands or their dresses.
“In perfume making, you might understand fruity, floral, musky, woody because the name itself describes the olfactory family. But chypre is not a material. It’s an archetype of perfume design. It’s a creation of perfume designers. Classically, in a chypre, we always have the same materials: you’ll have a fresh top note, a citrus note, an opulent floral bouquet of rose or jasmine, oakmoss, patchouli and sometimes a little bit of incense.
“I wanted to create a chypre, but it had to be an Hermès chypre. It wasn’t something that was an order from management; it came from my heart, so I sought out materials that would be different. I wanted to do something a little bit unusual, a sidestep.
“For the top note which is a citrus, I chose a bergamot—but not just any bergamot. I had it designed exclusively for Hermès. This bergamot is much sharper, neater. It has an assertive presence because it’s picked just before it matures. As for the floral bouquet, the very beautiful butterfly lily. Butterfly lilies come from Madagascar and it’s the first time that it’s used in perfume making. For oakmoss, I used oakwood instead. So you don’t have that woodland or undergrowth note that there usually is. Instead, you have an elegant woody, sensual note. It’s a little bit like the backbone of this creation.
“As for the patchouli, I decided to go two different routes. I used a patchouli and treated it in an old-fashioned way—the way it was done 40 or 50 years ago. And I combined it with a high-tech patchouli: natural, but obtained via a virtuous technology.”
Quest for the miracle berry
“When I was a child, I adored reading fairy tales. I remember a particular one vividly: it was a story of a magician-storyteller who lived in a baobab tree. This magician was popular in the village because he had a magical power. He had found a little fruit which could make sweet anything that was bitter, including people’s personalities. And that’s the story that stuck with me when I started out as a perfume designer; I sought out this berry and I could never find it.
“However, five years ago, I was doing a bit of research and I found a young man in France who imported those berries from Ghana. It was a little fruit known as the miracle berry. This miracle berry contains a molecule called miraculin and it does have the power to have everything acid or bitter [become] sweet. I’m curious by nature so I had kilos of this berry come in so that I could make an extract from it, but it didn’t work out. All I got was a tiny drop which I smelled and it was like a dried apricot, a piece of dried fruit. But, even more curious than that, I asked for a scientific analysis to be made and obtained a few molecules and thought, I’m going to reconstruct the smell of the miracle berry based on this.
“When I designed this chypre, I was creating it for myself, and I would stop and start working on a cologne or another project. But I kept having this attraction, bringing me back to this fragrance time and again. I’ve only had two occasions in my life where I thought it was exactly right and the second time was for this fragrance.
“I made an appointment with Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermès, and said, ‘I’d like you to smell something. It’s something that I’ve designed by myself secretly, but I’d like to tell you that if I were only to design one fragrance for Hermès, I would like it to be this one.’ So I put a bit of pressure on him, of course, but I was sincere. When he smelled it, he said, ‘Wow, yes let’s go.’ At Hermès, everything starts with olfaction, so when Pierre-Alexis said yes and we started off on this story together, we chose the bottle, we worked with designer Philippe Mouquet, we saw his designs. The designs for this fragrance [are] inspired by the Medor bracelet. This fragrance is an iconic structure like the Medor is iconic for Hermès.”
A leather by any other name
“As for the name Barenia, it’s a leather that returns the caress. The structure of the chypre is addictive.
“The choice of this chypre is unique and special. It was made possible because I have no time limitations: it takes time to find the right flower, to make an extract of oakwood. Nowadays, perfume houses don’t have the time—they have a project that has to be completed after a year whereas I have plenty of time. In total, there were 998 tests or iterations. Sometimes I went back to test number 90, but it didn’t matter because I had plenty of time. It wasn’t long because I wasn’t getting the right results, but because I wanted to try lots of things out—to be absolutely sure that my choice was correct.
“I’m not afraid of anything; I want to try things out when something catches my attention. I follow the story to the end and commit to it personally. I read this story when I was 10 years old, and when I was able to put it into practice, I was disappointed because I couldn’t get it right, but I thought, No matter, I can continue. When you’re an old perfume maker, you’re no longer afraid of anything, so you try things out. I have a lot of luck because the cells in the nose are the only cells in the human body that never age. You’re always young in your nose!
“Curiosity and surprise are something that happens on a daily basis. Perfume makes people dream, and when you have an olfactory dream, you can make it come true. If the two can combine, it’s always a beautiful story.”
