Barénia
Hermès are running a poster campaign right now but it’s hard to tell what they’re selling.
If you didn’t already know that Hermès sell bags and scarves, as well as perfumes, you wouldn’t be much wiser from their pre-vandalised posters; black and white images ripped across with a brown and gold stripe.
Here’s one on a bus shelter, next to a framing store.
Who seeks the orange finds the faubourg is an in joke that Parisian’s will get. The orange is the ochre of Hermès, while the faubourg Saint Honoré is their HQ in Paris.
Here’s another poster on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, with a pair of leather headphones on the right.
As far as the poster campaign goes, Hermès’ new perfume Barénia doesn’t exist.
If you search Hermès Barénia, you’ll find this sort of thing
a Barénia Faubourg leather Birkin.
It turns out that Barénia is a kind of soft leather which naturally has that Hermès colour. So, is Barénia bigging up the famous Birkin with a leather scent? Well … no, but we’ll come to that.
When it does appear on screen, Barénia is done up like a bulldog’s collar.
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On first inspection, it’s a fruchouli that contains a Miracle Berry accord. Miracle Berry is a real plant – Synsepalum dulcificum – which has glossy leaves and a red-wine coloured fruit that -when you eat it- makes anything sour taste like candy. The flowers are sweetly scented with a sour edge, and that’s more or less the gameplan here.
Barénia is basically a clash of two powerful halves; a pink La Vie est Belle fruity floral (minus the praline) and that’s paired with a dry and dark woods & patchouli (a bit like what appeared in Citron Noir – 2018). The woods are quite nuanced but the appeal of Barénia is more technical than tasteful.
At the end of the day it’s a strong Fruchouli, which is quite a surprise coming from Hermès, they don’t normally stray into High Street territory – even with the stuff they offer in scent supermarkets.
The thing with Barénia is; it’s good at what it does – but what it does is Fruchouli.