For years, the search had a shape but no name. Something green and alive—the brightness of cut grass, the lift of citrus, the particular stillness of a garden just before the heat arrives. For someone wired toward fire, the allure of that kind of quiet was persistent and a little inexplicable. I was searching for something I didn’t quite understand. I just didn’t know that I would have to travel halfway around the world to find it.
In the fall of 2016, I flew to Guangdong province, an hour north of Shenzhen, to train a team of local stylists and photographers in creating Western lifestyle imagery—the kind of furniture vignettes that tell a story before anyone says a word. The work was immersive and occasionally humbling, the gulf between visual cultures wider than I had imagined. For once, I was not a frantic worker, but the calm, confident instructor. The team was respectful and grateful for my help. I had faith in them. One stylist in particular—enormously talented, chronically uncertain of herself—was struggling to find the emotional center of a bedroom set. The room was luxurious, even voluptuous—the kind of space where you could imagine Rita Hayworth reaching for a robe. But it was still a stage, not a life.
One afternoon, she came to a standstill, her blank expression saying clearly: I don’t know what to do. I looked at her—simple white t-shirt beneath a translucent sheer blouse, ribboned at the sleeves. “We’ll use that,” I said, and held out my hand. She didn’t quite understand, but handed over the blouse. “Do you have any fancy slippers at home?” “Yes—with rhinestones.” “Bring them tomorrow.” We pulled a boudoir chair into the foreground, draped the delicate blouse across its arm, placed the sparkling mules at the foot of the bed. A small purse settled onto a nearby bench. Suddenly the room had an owner—a leading lady, mid-glamour, preparing for a wonderful evening. It had a story. My stylist’s eyes widened. She saw it. She threw herself into the details: a jeweled accent pillow tucked into the bedding, a cluster of perfume bottles gathered for the nightstand. Small touches, but transformative. She picked up the smallest one—a tiny crystal flacon, barely two inches tall—and held it toward me. I leaned in.
What met me was like the first breath of a garden I didn’t know existed. Green and luminous, faintly tart, with something cooler and more ancient moving underneath—reedy, almost aquatic, quietly floral. I had to know. I pulled out my iPhone. “Show me.”
She typed slowly. I watched the letters appear.
Hermès.
Of course.
Un Jardin sur le Nil—Jean-Claude Ellena’s 2005 eau de toilette, born from a walk through a mango grove on a Nile island—notes of green mango, lotus, hyacinth, grapefruit, bulrush, and incense. It was the fragrance that made Ellena’s career—he became Hermès’ first in-house perfumer on its strength—and the subject of Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent, a book that pulled the curtain back on the artistry behind what we so casually spray on our wrists. I had found it on a nightstand in southern China, on a November afternoon thick with humidity and silk.
Here is what you should know: I am an Aries, through and through. The fragrances of my earlier years announced themselves accordingly—bold, electric, unapologetic. Scents with presence and edge—the kind that entered a room before you did. The quiet, the restful, the sublime—these were things I admired from a respectful distance, the way you admire someone else’s temperament. To find myself undone by something this still, this green and unhurried, required going somewhere entirely unfamiliar.
On my last day in the studio, Vania pressed the small bottle into my hands. “Take this,” she said, palms cupped around it like something precious. “It’ll help you find the real thing back home.” Back in Chicago, I did find it—a proper bottle, waiting for the return of spring. But the crystal flacon lives in my dresser still, a few drops remaining, and I think of her whenever I open the drawer. Some things find you only when you stop looking in the obvious places. Sometimes you have to go halfway around the world to find another side of yourself.
Photos | Hermès
No products in the cart.