Scent of Hermès: Christine Nagel

A bucking horse is kicking its hind legs against a corner wall of Christine Nagel’s Hermès offices. Made from sheets of black metal, the near life-size sculpture has been cast by French artist and jockey Jean Louis Sauvat.

Horsemanship has been a pillar of the brand’s heritage since Thierry Hermès established his first Paris workshop in 1837, specialising in bridles and harnesses. “I am scared of horses”, Christine Nagel admits. “But, I love everything equestrian. At Hermès, the horse is the premier client”.

Since her appointment as Hermès’ first female in-house perfumer in 2016, the award-winning ‘nose’ has been familiarising herself with the brand’s four-legged mascot: three years ago, she attended her first Saut Hermès, an annual show jumping competition. It was then, backstage at the Grand Palais that Nagel bonded with a prize-winning steed named Scheherazade. “I smelled this horse outside its box”, she says. “The scent of this horse – it’s amazing. It’s sensual, comfortable. I return every year to visit Scheherazade. A Swiss horse, like me!”

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Born and raised in Geneva, Nagel joined the research laboratories of Swiss fragrance and flavour expert Firmenich SA upon graduating in organic chemistry. Nagel’s request for expert training with the company’s perfumery department was refused; instead, she began to specialise in Chromatography, the highly-skilled practice of decoding and synthesising a formula’s raw materials using only her sense of smell as a tool. But the lure of perfumery was too strong and Nagel eventually upped and left for Italy. “This is perhaps my tip for a young perfumer: take risks”, she says today. Nagel’s bold move paid off and she returned to Paris in 1997, having masterminded fragrances for Italian brands including Fendi and Versace.

“I love my job because I create one fragrance distilling all the brand’s values”, Nagel enthuses. “It’s very important. A bottle of perfume is probably the first item you buy from a luxury brand”. A prolific creator, Nagel has captured and bottled the olfactory DNA of luxury marques including Givenchy, Cartier and Giorgio Armani. For maison Dior, she balanced the notes of strawberry leaves and caramelised popcorn with sharp green tangerine (Miss Dior Cherie, 2005); green tangerine also featured in her 2000 Lagerfeld Femme concoction. When designer John Galliano began work on his debut fragrance in 2008 he drafted in Nagel for expert guidance; to date, Nagel has dreamt up 47 scents for London-based Jo Malone. ‘“I am the least English perfumer”, she says before adding that, “Everything is possible if you have passion”.

In 2014, Nagel was recruited by Hermès. Following a two-year handover period with Grasse-born perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena, who had been orchestrating the brand’s fragrance division since 2004, Nagel introduced her first three Hermès creations in 2016. The oriental Galop d’ Hermès, which is bottled in a complex horseshoe-shaped flacon, Eau des Merveilles Bleue and a sprightly, bright-red cologne named Eau de Rhubarbe Écarlate. Last year, Nagel dreamt up another addition to Hermès best-selling collection of invigorating colognes: Eau de Citron Noir captures the smoky notes of black lime, more commonly used in Middle Eastern cooking than French perfumery. “I am very happy because I am free”, says Nagel. “I am free to choose my ingredients, and my ingredients are [of] the best quality possible. J’ai la chance!”

Exuberance and risk taking is very much part of Nagel’s mind set as a perfumer as I find out when she tells me about one of her hobbies: the perfumer likes to rollerblade through Paris, on her feet a white leather design by Hermès. “I love to rollerblade”, she enthuses.

Nagel chose to work from Hermès’ group of workshops in Pantin, a suburb in Paris’ North-East. At Hermès, an absolute devotion to handcrafts is key and Pantin is home to tailors crafting sur mesure (bespoke) menswear, leather artisans and silk weavers manning specialised looms. Nagel’s offices are located on the uppermost floor of a white-washed 1933 Art Deco building designed by Michel Bore; originally set up for Hermès chairman and fifth-generation family scion Jean-Louis Dumas, the office resembles the captain’s cabin on an ocean liner. A large central studio opens onto a sun-drenched balcony which Nagel planted with an aromatic potpourri of Jasmin shrubs, tomato bushes and wild rhubarb. Her apartment-like suite of rooms also counts a private laboratory; here, her assistant of 17-years guards fragile raw materials. Elsewhere, dark-brown parquet is a feat of trompe l’oeil: the floor is made from strips of Hermès’ leathers, secreting a faint warm aroma.

It is from this idyllic set-up that Nagel has devised her Hermès follow-ups: in addition to five new scents for the brand’s exclusive Hermèsence offering (including two innovative perfume oils), she has remastered the maison’s best-selling Terre d’Hermes, reinterpreting Ellena’s original formula by using Chinese Szechuan pepper, green bergamot and Vetiver. Un Jardin Sur La Lagune is Nagle’s 2019 ode to the city of Venice and Frederic Eden’s 1884 landscaped garden. “I am not just inspired by Hermès. Hermès is my source of inspiration but I have my personality, my vision. It’s a mix of my creativity and this marvellous brand”, she says. “All creation is the result of an encounter – travel, a landscape, a flower”.

Most recently, Nagel revisited her 2019 Twilly d’Hermès perfume, tweaking her ginger-spiced formula. The process required more than 12-months of in-house trials. “For the first time in my life, I have time to create”, Nagel explains. “At Hermès, creation is at the centre. When I finish a perfume, the story starts. If I am not ready, the story doesn’t start. That’s a gift”.