Jour d’Hermès, Hermès

In the perfume section of the Hermès website, Jour is described as “zenithal” and “paradoxical”, so if I had not already smelt it, I would have disliked it immediately. What the perfume actually is; a high-quality, effervescent, straightforward, citrusy floral, that is easy to like and easy to ignore.

Upon doing a bit of browsing around others’ reviews of Jour (as one does before one writes one’s own review), I was impressed with the fact that about 90% of the wearers principally thought that it was a good scent to wear to the office. Besides the positive feminist connotations - the majority of women having established themselves as professionals so as to require an office scent - this nevertheless vexes me somewhat. 

Let me explain. The main quality of an office scent would be its agreeableness to others, for us not to become unpopular with our poor co-workers, who would otherwise have to gag and gasp for breath if seated next to us awful perfume-wearers for eight hours every day. And this is where my annoyance arises. Are only fellow co-workers deserving of consideration? Shouldn't our scent be our personal signature, an olfactory comfort zone? Why pretend to be a different person, with different tastes while in the office,unless we need to confront the fact that our smell of choice is offensive to others and therefore abandoned in favor of collective harmony. Lastly, what particular smells are acceptable in offices above others and what's with the smell fascism? When it comes to Jour in particular, it does it no justice to be labelled an office scent. It is quite a bit more interesting than that.

Back to the Hermès website, there are very few notes attributed to the composition: gardenia (a chemical compound I presume, as no usable essential oil can be extracted from the flower), rose, tuberose and jasmine; which is white flowers, essentially, the universal trump card of perfumery. So, where is the grapefruit at? My first whiff of Jour d’Hermès is almost entirely reminiscent of freshly cut grapefruit, a bit of lemon and some sweet pea. The composition quickly progresses into almost entirely grapefruit followed by a synthetic mix of white flowers and another compound that I must be anosmic to*, because my sense of smell seems to take a nap at this point and all I am left smelling is a flickering grapefruit again supported by a splash of very weak jasmine and white roses.

Back to the Hermès website and Jean Claude Hellena (one of the most important perfumers of modern times and the nose behind Jour d’Hermès), revealing a bit about the story behind the scent: “I wanted to express the essence of femininity with flowers, nothing but flowers.” Still no mention of grapefruit, or the gorgeous, creamy, woody base, that along with the grapefruit, truly make this scent stand out from a sea of white-floral-wear-to-the-office-boring perfumes out there. In fact it is the base notes that truly got me interested in Jour.

I was given a gift set of Jour d’Hermès, that included the Eau de Parfum and the body cream, tucked inside an incredibly beautiful box printed to look like an Hermès scarf (what this house unequivocally does best). I adored the box at first glance and after application came to truly enjoy the body cream as well. In many ways the silky, lightweight body cream may even deliver better than the perfume, which after a few spritzes and due to its poor silage and my being anosmic to one of its top notes, I stopped wearing altogether. All until a couple of weeks later, when I slipped on a sweater I had been wearing when I last had sprayed Jour on me and found myself wondering what that yummy smell was.

If I could have it my way, I would keep only the grapefruit and base notes and pour the resulting juice in the bottle for Twilly (I would also keep the Twilly ad campaign which has been head-and-shoulders above anything that has come out of the beauty industry advertising machine in years).

Back to the Hermès Jour page, directly quoted below are still a few things in need of clarification:
“Femininity in fragrance form” - that is such an overstatement that I will not even qualify it with mockery.
“...Jour d’Hermes highlights female beauty” - unlike other perfumes that highlight the female sense of humor, ennui or obsessive compulsive disorder (though I would pay good money to smell a perfume that professed to highlight any one of the three).
“A profusión of bouquets” - I immediately have visions of flowers slapped around my face repeatedly.
“...here is a floral that flowers, a blossom that blossoms” - as opposed to other florals that snore loudly and other blossoms that do cart-wheels and call you a ‘sissy’.

Books and Perfume Final Verdict: 6/10 - 7 and a half/10 if counting the body cream and gift-set box.

*Mystery solved: it must be Iso E Super. Apparently Hellena uses it by the bucketful.