Eau d’Orange Verte, the leader of a fragrance collection. The story of Hermès began in 1837, but not as a perfumer. Thierry Hermès first set up in Paris as a harness maker. It was over time that this house's universe expanded. Émile Hermès, grandson of the founder, marketed leather goods, and it was through successive generations that the luxury house evolved until it took on the making of perfumes.
By asking several perfumers in the late seventies to compete over the composition of an Eau de Cologne, the house of Hermès managed to innovate by restoring the standing of a great classic that had disappeared from perfumery. Françoise Caron won this fine reward and had the pleasure of seeing her composition for Eau d’Orange Verte become one of the greatest successes of the house of Hermès, while also being the first bottle in a magnificent range, the Eaux d’Hermès.
Eau d’Orange Verte: the house of Hermès's first Eau de Cologne, signed Françoise Caron
On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the release of the very first, and now iconic, Eau d’Orange Verte by Hermès, Françoise Caron and Jean-Claude Ellena, the two main perfumers behind the Eaux range, finally shared a few secrets about the collection's creation.
It was thus revealed that Hermès, wishing to release an Eau de Cologne that would not hold back, had organized a kind of contest in which the greatest noses, including Jean-Claude Ellena (already!), competed to compose what would become Eau d’Hermès and, much later, Eau d’Orange Verte. It was Françoise Caron's fresh yet distinguished composition that won the house's favor.
The perfumer, a great devotee of Eaux de Cologne, indeed managed to create for Eau d’Orange Verte a very tangy yet aromatic water with beautiful fruity notes. From its release in 1979, Eau d’Hermès (Eau d’Orange Verte) became a great Hermès classic, cultivating, through its fresh character with an original personality, a sense of elegant distinction. Jean-Claude Ellena, a perfumer closely tied to Hermès and author of a great number of fragrances in the Eaux range, which opened with this Eau d’Orange Verte, states on this subject:
In fact, for two years already, we had been discussing the fact that colognes are a territory close to the fundamentals of the house [Hermès]. A simple yet elaborate fragrance, a gesture as masculine as it is feminine... In short, a certain aristocratic spirit.
A water designed to be as powerful as a perfume: Eau d’Orange Verte by Hermès
I then made a very legible proposal, very citrus, but with a slight crushed mint effect that the others probably did not have, and this blackcurrant bud note, this fruity touch that is very lively. It was one of my first fragrances. What a wonderful gift! Françoise Caron on Eau d’Orange Verte for Hermès, in L'Express.
Thus, Eau d’Orange Verte was designed by Françoise Caron to be light to wear like an Eau de Cologne while retaining the strong personality of a fragrance in its own right. The tangy notes are indeed very present, as in a classic Eau de Cologne, but they are soon offset by a mint that sweeps through everything in its path. In the heart, set against an oceanic hedione, the fruity notes play the gourmand guests while blending into luminous white flowers. Finally, warm and sensual woody depths give this beautiful Eau d’Orange Verte a remarkable and noticed presence.