Hermès - All Change at the Galop
In retrospect it seems that Christine Nagel got off to a safe start with Galop. She had more extreme things in the locker, but for the first release she wasn't going to rock the boat, at least – not yet.
That's not to say Galop is ordinary. It’s a cold spice and pale pink rose; a strange combination that feels derived from Arab perfumery. I don't think it's meant for Arab buyers though – even if sales in the Gulf wouldn’t go amiss – but it feels like Nagel embraced an ethnic style and brought it home to a western audience.
This kind of thing had been done before at Hermès. When Jean-Claude Ellena was there they would send him off to different parts of the world for inspiration, but the lens of Ellena’s vision was so strong it bent all his subjects to the same focal point, with the result that several of the Jardins feel like alternative habillements of the same fruity accord. No matter where they sent him he reported the same thing.
Not so with Nagel, her MO lets her preserve the Arabian feel of her saffron-rose and give it a unique twist, which makes Galop ambiguous. It’s a saffron and pale pink rose, with a cold and piquant spiciness, and then there’s an abstract fruity nuance and a sour black leather in the base. Leather was obligatory in Hermès fragrances until Ellena did away with it. But Nagel reinstated it, showing she had one eye on tradition as well as a taste for modernity.
The spiced piquancy of Galop makes it feel strident: not completely feminine, or conventionally masculine, and it’s not a neutral scent either; it’s a perfume of high contrast or high gain – as musicians might say. It’s not loud but it will fill a room with radiance. This is not the manic power of Citron Noir, or Rhubarbe Écarlate, but it still might have come as a shock to those who were expecting Nagel to be Ellena Mk2, churning out water colour scents in his image.
And that could be an issue for the patrons of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Whether Hermès can bring Ellena’s public with them, or find a new younger audience – that may still be in the balance. It’s been eight years, and so far there’s not been another Terre, but then again, that sort of thing only happens only once in a lifetime. Only time will tell.
(Boxed Spray Sample of Pure Perfume)