STYLE Edit: Hermès’ Un Jardin sur la Lagune fragrance is straight from the secret garden
Green oasis has existed in the heart of Venice for more than a century
Un Jardin sur la Lagune, the latest fragrance by Hermès, is the fifth release in the Les Jardins collection. Each fragrance has navigated the transcendent connection between perfumer and place.
Un Jardin sur la Lagune transports to the Garden of Eden – in Italy. Also known as Giardino Eden, this real-life paradise exists on the island of Giudecca in Venice. The garden once belonged to an English lord, Frederic Eden, who was purportedly dissatisfied with the overwhelming Venetian blue and desired something lush, green and blooming with flowers instead. So, an English garden was created in a Venetian lagoon in 1884.
Since its inception, the garden has been visited by lords and ladies, poets and painters – and more recently, Hermès head perfumer Christine Nagel.
Although the villa and its grounds are not open to the public, Nagel wanted to see the secret garden for herself. The notion that a green oasis has existed in the heart of Venice for more than a century, filled with a magical, glorious past was too bewitching to ignore.
A spiritual connection with the garden du jour formed, predominantly the sense of nostalgia without sadness that Nagel has impressed into the fragrance’s olfactory memory.
From the Garden of Eden, Nagel has built the notes of Un Jardin sur la Lagune. Woodiness is laced with floral notes of Madonna lilies, magnolias and the citrus-sweet aroma of pittosporums. Salicornia, also known as samphire, brings in subtle aquatic notes of the Venetian coast. The culmination is “the secret sweetness of a dream garden”.