Hermes Terre d Hermes
Hermes started in 1837 making harnesses and bridles for carriages, and it has kept an unusual attitude to perfume ever since. For many years Jean-Claude Ellena was employed as the house exclusive perfumer with the freedom to work slowly, which almost nobody in the industry gets.
Terre d Hermes, his 2006 composition, is the one bottle on this page, in 75 ml eau de parfum. Ellena described it as a story about matter rather than about a person: it begins with orange and grapefruit, moves through a strange flinty mineral accord that smells like struck stone, and lands on vetiver and cedar. There is nothing sweet in it anywhere. That is rare now, and it is why the scent has not dated in twenty years.
The eau de parfum is the fuller and more grounded of the concentrations, with more vetiver and less of the citrus fizz.
The listing offers 5 ml and 10 ml decants as well as the full bottle. Terre is one of those fragrances people either wear for decades or cannot get along with at all, so a small size first is not a bad idea.
Order it online, or come by the Miami Gardens store to try it.
