From Michelyn's Hermès Scarf Collection: MADAME Cuir

I have worn many Hermès fragrances over the years. A favourite is Kelly Calèche, Jean Claude Ellena’s bittersweet homage to lipstick and perfumed-stained leather bags. Leather is of course the lifeblood of Hermès. I always have it in my collection; it’s not been an easy relationship, I disliked this perfume the first time it tried it, a collision of Barenia calf extract and tuberose that seemed distasteful to me when I first encountered it. But as is the case with most things that repel me I can’t keep away. The drydown is one of the best in the business, sweet, rummagy fine hide, supple and luxuriously aloof.

Jean Claude Ellena 

 M. Ellena has had an intriguing position within the House, creating when he wants to, working in virtual isolation in his exquisite lab in Grasse. He seems like the most charming and avuncular of men, erudite and philosophical as only the French can be, holding forth on the beauty of concrete, grass, cumin and water. Running alongside the more accessible mainline launches (Terre d’Hermès is one of the world’s most successful men’s fragrances, copied endlessly and badly) is the Hermessence collection.  Introduced in 2004,  the series of more experimental, quixotic aromas with a more artistic ethereal bent; I love Vanille Galante’s lavish banana sundae custardy excess and Brin Réglisse’s pared down, puritan style.

Hermès Hermessence Cuir d’Ange and Jean Giano's Jean le Bleu Photo:Hermès

 Cuir d’Ange is the twelfth addition to the Hermessence collection and a direct reference to the writings of Jean Giono (1895-1970), the Provençal author, whose novels include the beautiful Le Hussard sur le Toit, filmed by Jean Paul Rappenau in 1996, starring Juliette Binoche. Giono is M. Ellena’s favourite author; they are both soaked in a passion for all things Provençal and in Jean le Bleu, published by Grasset in 1932 there is a passage that reads: ‘I can never pass by a shoemaker’s shop without thinking that my father still exists, somewhere beyond this world, sitting at a spirit table with his blue apron, his shoemakers knife, his waxends, his awls, making shoes of angels’ leather for some thousand legged god’.

 This soft, gently animalic treatment of leather, tanned, florally cured, blushed and powdered is my favourite Ellena in years. Kelly Calèche’s leather was bitter and fabulously confrontational, soaked in leaf litter, sap and crushed petal. Cuir d’Ange's is the smudged tips of leather-winged angels, cutting air as they watch our lives, deciding on value, love, death and ruin. It is a fantasy of light-reflected wing and almond scented dissolve.

 Hermès Leather Forever Exhibition in London 2012: Photo Wallpaper Magazine

 It’s true that while it doesn’t really break new ground in terms of interpreting a leather note, it does provide a wonderfully expensive and coy peek into the Hermès atelier. The notes include heliotrope, the very French note of hawthorn, violet, narcissus, musk and of course leather. The amandine facet of heliotrope plus the aching nostalgia inherent in violet dredge powder over the supple leather blooms. Hawthorn is a very odd note to use, in actuality smells  a bit urinous and  sweet clover honey crashed together in one heady unsettling blossom. In Cuir d’Ange, M. Ellena has used its acerbity to counterbalance any overtly animalic cured effects from the leather and musks. The narcissus is beautiful and something he used to stunning effect already in Vanille Galante. It can soothe and pacify excess, while bringing a cool, creamy indolic sensuality of its own to the olfactive party.

Photo: Harper's Bazaar Spain April 2010 Laura Blokhina with Birkin

 There is one eye on the Birkin-swinging, cashmere-clad ladies who populate the hushed Hermès boutiques, but it is also a subtle and I think, a personal statement of d’origine by Jean Claude Ellena, making a lovely link between his love of Giono, artisan craftsmanship, Provence and his tenure at Hermès.

 Marrying Hermès hide, our skin and a perfumed leather accord into a soaring and sophisticated signature perfume is quietly magical thing. When I’m wearing it… if I stand very still and listen, I can almost catch the beat of a powdered wing behind me.

Disclosure: From my own collection

–The Silver Fox,  Senior Editor and Editor of The Silver Fox

Editor's Note: In my 2009 interview with Jean Claude Ellena, he wrote in great detail about his relationship with his mentor Edmond Roudnistka, his  creative process,  the original Hermessences, Kelly Calèche (and his thoughts on "flankers").  -Michelyn Camen, Editor in Chief and Art Director