Un jardin après la mousson. Hermés.

Perfumist: Jean Claude Hellena.

Notes of lime, basil, citron, coriander, cardamom, green pepper, ginger flower, water lily, vetiver, amber.

I was wondering yesterday at Paragon Dep. Store here in Bangkok, trying to find substitutes of my summer fragrances, as in Thailand hot and humidity fades away quickly every single subtle scents you can wear.
A sale assistant approach me with this new launch from Hermes.
I really wasn’t aware of the “garden” range from the brand.
So I decided to give it a go, and, I quite like this new one: It’s a spicy, green, damp, citrus aroma that evokes the scent of ginger lemonade, with the tart, peppery smell of lime.


“Un jardin après la mousson” reminds me straight away a calm walk through the spicy market in Kerala, the dewy green of a mediterranean field on spring and the monzonic hard rain period in India, in an anti natural way, that makes me wonder, and I think, this is a great synthetic perfume, well blended.

Here, to my nose, like the older brothers, the water aquatic notes reveal a singularity that goes way beyond it, like a tonic. The main notes are aquatic, with strong hints of lime and water lily flower.


The perfume starts sour and zesty, (instant deja vú of the glorious Lime “Soda” from CDG).
There’s like an aqueous feeling of being in front of a sweet-sour lemonade drink, without the effervescence, but the scent goes green immediately, aromatic and spicy.
Coriander reveals at this stage green but subtle, plus peppery accords with the cardamom note and ginger flower, here ghostly and leaning to the soft spicy too.

The intromission of the water lily in the heart notes is gorgeous.
Soft, calm, a nice different floral note. The whole perfume remains softly spicy yet sour-aromatic, yet aquatic, yet subtle, energetic too.
I can detect a vague aroma of wet soil here, right in the background. I assume is the blend of the ginger flower hand by hand to the green pepper note and vetiver, showing itself like a far away rumour of the olfative image of the wet scent of a garden after rain.

In the base notes the vetiver is soft, (again, as the whole accords), but not in the same line of fresh colognes or sporty fragrances.

Water lily note is rather a feminine accord, but in here, gives a very complex, serious twist to the whole formula. I quite see myself easily wearing this perfume on “calurosas nights”.

At the end, the juice remains in your skin for 4-5 hours, first, intensive, like a glorious cloud around you, but gets subtle after two hours after apply.
Is this kind of scent that keeps coming and go from the sight, and, suddenly, reminds you, that you wear a nice perfume.
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