Eau des Merveilles
Hermès (2004)

I’ll start by saying I am picky about fragrance… really picky. Most perfumes smell too sweet on me, they leave me feeling nauseous. Citrus smells don’t last either. I smell things very strongly and honestly most I don’t like.
This perfume however is perfect. It reminds me of the beach at the end of a warm day, it sits on my skin and works amazingly with my body chemistry and I’ve had no end of compliments.
It’s probably verging on a unisex scent but manages to smell feminine on my skin without any of the sickly or flowery undertones. Spicy, salty and woody. I’m yet to find another fragrance that even compares although the elixir is a close contender. Heavier and sweeter without actually smelling too sweet.

Eau des Merveilles has a glaring fault.
A starchy desiccation of woods and peppery orange, it's an abstraction of 'ambergris' that couldn't be less sympa.
The problem is, it's over intellectualised.
It's a clever idea (see the Basenotes intro at the top of the page ) but there's not enough ambery warmth. And what there is leaves no 'way in' to the perfume, no humanity to latch onto.
Eau des Merveilles is the unknowable heart of a mermaid.
It leaves me rather cold.

How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways…

This is a beautiful, intelligent scent that always makes me feel special.
I love the saltiness and the citrus - so well-blended and addictive.

When I don’t have this in my wardrobe, I miss it so much. I always carry a decent in my handbag.

Grounded optimism. Oakmoss and ambergris are perfume juggernauts because they buttress more evanescent, poignant topnotes. They provide a deep, comforting gauze on which other sensations can play out, but here that expanse of negative space is just given a little sparkle and otherwise left blank. It's as comforting as looking into the night sky.

The elemi-lemon is closer to a single accord than two separate ones; it finishes with a creamy citrus.

Light but not quite an eau de cologne-style projection, it lasts for maybe half a day. I like it in the transition from Summer to Autumn, it feels bright but salty notes always read a lil wistful on me.

I'm not the first person to bring it up I'm sure, but the point of Eau des Merveilles by Hermès (2004) is to create a feminine market fragrance that does not contain florals. This was apparently just before Jean-Claude Ellena picked up the reigns as house perfumer for the brand, so Ralph Shwieger and Nathalie Feisthauer were put to task on it, and their solution to the problem of a flowerless feminine perfume was rather unique: make a citrus and woods fragrance upside-down. Yes, that's right, the notes of Eau de Merveilles are positioned and proportioned so that notes typically on top are instead in the final dry down, and notes usually associated with the base come out of the sprayer on skin. I'm guessing this concoction worked, because it spawned a series of flankers, some inventive and some not so much. I don't think Hermès Eau de Merveilles smells much like genius, but it is good, and unisex despite the market copy. The Jean-Claude Ellena and Christine Nagel eras full of transparent nothingness and one-two punch accord structures have made erstwhile minimalist freshies like Eau de Merveilles seem redundant, even if they came first.

The opening salvo of oakmoss and vetiver is quite strange to the unsuspecting first-time sprayer, but the smell is quite aromatic and nice, being green and a bit woody, with a perfect set up for a transition into a nice cedar in the heart (which can sometimes be in the heart in normal fragrances too), flanked by what is claimed to be a rare use of true ambergris in a designer fragrance. I can't verify this claim, and to me it would seem cost prohibitive, beyond skirting various laws in various countries, but there is a sort of mineralic breathy muskiness that is a tell-tale of ambergris, but could just the same be a high-quality ambroxide compound. A bit of "watery freshness" that can only be described as a properly-chlorinated pool (some of you will know what I mean) merges into the citrus base of lemon and orange, given heft by a large dose of pink pepper and a hidden unlisted musk component, because no amount of citrus will anchor to skin for long. The smell is fresh and clean, not exactly "aquatic" nor really floral, but nice. Wear time is about eight hours, and performance is average all around. Suggested use would be summer for me, as a casual scent.

I don't think many people really pay attention to this line beyond Hermès fans or influencers on Instagram and YouTube, who get sent the latest bottles from this line to push onto their following, because I literally see nobody talking about this unless they're someone with professional-looking bottle photos taken with a Leica camera and at least 10,000 followers to their name. Most "average Joe/average Jane" types are stuck on main-line Hermès perfumes like Terre d'Hermès (2006) or older classics like Calèche (1961), but if you're the kind of person to veer into the Hermèssence, then you're also likely to enjoy this scent and its brood as well. The quirky built-in sprayer head and "tilt to the side" bottle base are nice to look at, as is the starry sort of bottle design that reminds of the later and discontinued Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight in Paris (2011), but none of that matters unless you just collect to display. Ultimately, this is a light and harmless freshy with a sunny citrus disposition and a bit of marine vibe throughout, but ends up being a bit of a high-priced alternative in a saturated market segment. Try before you buy! Thumbs up.

Eau des Merveilles is a devilishly hard scent to describe because of its very unusual "upside down" pyramid; you've probably smelled these elements before, but not married together this way. That "familiar but unfamiliar" aspect is perhaps what leaves Eau des Merveilles slightly under the radar, though I'm inclined to think of it as the last masterpiece from Hermès.

The "salty orange" Hermès scent that seems to get the most talk is Terre d'Hermès, but Eau des Merveilles came first. It would seem to have been a hit; it has been successful enough to anchor a line of flankers (the best of which is Elixir, which takes the amber here and amps it up in a more full-bodied, autumnal direction).

Eau des Merveilles might be described as orange-scented sunshine with a bit of breezy aroma from a woody beach. It's warm, delicate, a bit powdery, with an ambergris-style amber anchoring the fragile nuances.

The ambition guiding Eau des Merveilles's creation was the ambition to create a feminine scent without leaning on feminine fragrance cliches, and I find it woody enough to be unisex (in fact, when I initially tried it, I wasn't aware it was a "feminine" scent at all).