![]() At her fashion shows, I’m always impressed by the visual sensation – I can almost feel the quality of her cashmeres, of her leathers, her silks.” It should come as no surprise, then, that for Nichanian, materials are king: the artistic director starts with fabric and colour shape is secondary, unearthed later during the process of creation. “And I found a lot of similarities between her work and mine – for example, her relationship with material and this impression that you can almost touch the fabric with the eyes. “I was nourished by the creative vision of Véronique Nichanian – and her Hermès man,” explains Nagel over a video call. After Nagel’s tweak of the original Terre with the release of its Eau Intense Vétiver, H24 is her first original masculine gesture for Hermès. That last pair comprises Galop, inspired by the Hermès leather vault, and Twilly, a peppery, powdery scent that channels the effervescent allure of the label’s silk scarves. Nagel has created a group of five Hermessences, two colognes, one Jardin and two feminine-focused scents since she has been at the maison. But Terre remains a landmark fragrance for men. Much of the perfumery at Hermès – described by the house as a métier in itself – is unisex the androgyny of the scents included in the Jardin collection and the premium Hermessences (described as olfactory poems), for example, is key to their enduring mystique and appeal. So revered was he, in fact, that his retirement was drawn out over two years while Nagel was gently phased in. He has written extensively and beautifully on the subject and concocted more than 30 scents during his time at Hermès. Ellena is famous for his intellectual approach to olfaction: in 1990, he helped establish the Osmothèque, an international scent archive of more than 3,000 perfumes – some otherwise extinct, others ultra rare – based in Versailles. Flinty, mineral and earthy, as the name suggests, it was devised by the near-legendary Jean-Claude Ellena, Hermès’s nose for 12 years. Terre, as it’s often lovingly referred to, is a tough act to follow. It is also the first major men’s perfume since Nagel joined the company in 2014, and a first for the house since the seminal Terre d’Hermès was released 15 years ago. Put together, H24 sounds cold: technical, chemical and lucid. Also homme, human and hour – like the 24 in the day. It’s not the first fragrance from the maison to do so: 24 Faubourg, composed by Maurice Roucel in 1995, is a bright and sunny eau de toilette for women with a sandalwood base, buoyed by a bouquet of white flowers. That persistent, electric tang bolsters Nagel’s new fragrance, H24 – the name references Hermès’s historic flagship at 24, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, opened in 1880 and still its base today. A familiar smell of hot metal on damp wool fills this domain. One floor below is the menswear studio, presided over by Véronique Nichanian, artistic director of the Hermès ‘men’s universe’. ![]() ![]() It has a panoramic view of the workshop complex. Nagel’s office has a tree-lined terrace and was once occupied by Jean-Louis Dumas, the father of the current artistic director of Hermès, Pierre-Alexis. She, too, works in a top-floor studio, but this one is at Les Ateliers d’Hermès, a vast grey-green glass building in Pantin, a suburb outside northeast Paris. Today, that singular scent is still very present for Nagel. That smell of dampness – the hot metal and wool – is absolutely unique,” she says. I would watch her take her red-hot iron and place it on a damp cloth over trousers to iron them. “It was on the top floor of a very dark building in Geneva. Hermès’s in-house perfumer, Christine Nagel, remembers visiting her grandmother, a trouser tailor, at her workshop as a child.
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