Jour d’Hermès, the quintessence of femininity according to Hermès The first Hermès boutique was opened by Thierry Hermès in 1837. At the outset, he made and sold harnesses along with various equipment for horses.
Jean-Claude Ellena knows how to offer his finest poems within his house, Hermès. As the legendary saddler’s dedicated perfumer, Ellena constantly works on new fragrant creations that he builds like poems, like olfactory paintings. With Jour, he wanted to give Hermès the most feminine fragrance possible while paying tribute to the luminosity of a countryside afternoon, those bright afternoons when one loves to wear Hermès.
Jour d’Hermès, or the fragrance of soft afternoon light, by Jean-Claude Ellena
Terre, Eau des Merveilles, the Parfums Jardins... There is no counting the creations that Jean-Claude Ellena has given to the house of Hermès, of which he has been the dedicated perfumer since 2004. Indeed, Hermès has known how to let the perfumer’s genius speak by giving free rein to his creativity. A creative freedom that suits the master perfumer so well that he continues to produce one successful fragrance after another. Jour d’Hermès would prove no exception...
At the outset of the story of Jour d’Hermès, Hermès executives and Jean-Claude Ellena wanted to release a fragrance of absolute femininity. Indeed, until then, Hermès’s successes had played more on ambivalence. For Jour, there would be none of that; instead, luxurious, precious and ultra-feminine flowers would take center stage.
But this new feminine fragrance also had to be entirely devoted to light. Jean-Claude Ellena shares a few secrets about the birth of Jour d’Hermès: first, we wanted a feminine fragrance. Second, in the discussions I had with Pierre Alexis and Pierre Hardy, there was the notion of light. The importance of light for craftsmen. The fragrance could have been called Lumière, too.
Jour d’Hermès: a fragrance blending flowers that leaves the imagination free rein
We now know that Jean-Claude Ellena wanted to compose this new Jour d’Hermès as, on the one hand, an ode to femininity, and on the other, a tribute to light.
To make this result possible, Ellena brought together all the flowers into colorful armfuls with a thousand scents. Thus, in Jour d’Hermès, it is almost impossible to determine the exact floral notes. The master perfumer, moreover, remains willingly evasive on the subject, hinting nonetheless that the heart is built around a sweet pea-gardenia accord that illustrates his wish to blend city flowers and country flowers. Beyond that, nothing more is revealed. And that is precisely the point of the exercise, for Jour d’Hermès is appropriated intimately by each person, who is free to imagine “their” flower, born of all the others.
It was this notion of a grand floral, he wanted something abstract that was at the same time very natural. A naturalness he tries to express in the fragrance without being able to point to any specific flower. So it is a kind of universal flower... Yes, that could be it, the universal flower. Jean-Claude Ellena on Jour d’Hermès.