L’Étrier d’Hermès: My Stirrupy Sweet Love Affair With Galop d’Hermès

In the process of explaining how I ended up buying what is probably one of the most well-known yet less commonly owned fragrances in my collection, it is my hope to do all of the following:

(1) Give readers a half-way decent review of the fragrance – Galop d’Hermès.

(2) Explain the allure of THE BOTTLE in this instance, to those who cannot understand “bottle buys”

(3) Demystify the house of Hermès, just a bit, for those who are “new to the brand”

(4) Shed some limited sunlight on the topics of rose and leather scents in general

(5) Encourage men having psychological difficulty “crossing the aisle” to wear marketed feminine fragrances, by providing some brutally honest, non-PC talk about the benefits, the risks, the joys, and the laughs.

Because YES – fragrances do have gender – it says so right on the bottle – and yes – it makes a difference – and yes – sometimes wearing fragrances that members of THE TARGET GENDER actually LIKE THEMSELVES is one of the dirtiest tricks in the little black book of mmm-mmm-mmm.

And with an explanation of THAT, we will get started.

I have a policy about buying fragrances when I’m shopping with my wife. If my WIFE wants me to buy a particular fragrance – and we are talking about the same wife that thinks I have WAY too many fragrances – then I don’t ask questions – I simply BUY IT.

Fragrances that YOU like, and that your “significant other” likes, and that your “significant other” likes on you – these are too few and far between. Just buy the damn stuff, and don’t ask questions.

I once had the experience of watching a college-aged woman – stunningly beautiful, mind you – nearly begging her muscle-bound boyfriend, while fragrance-shopping for him in Sephora, to let her buy him Dior Homme. It was cringeworthy to the point of pain to watch this guy simply NOT taking the hint.

One needs to bear in mind that Dior Homme has always been considered by some to be a bit “girly” because of a slightly cosmetic iris accord that many likened to lipstick. Many women love to wear Dior Homme themselves. The somewhat unisex nature of Dior Homme is not a big deal now, but it was back then. There were a few guys who simply couldn’t go there. However, most guys could, and the fragrance was quite popular. My wife likes it, too, by the way, although on ME, not on HER.

What I have found is that there are basically three kinds of fragrances my wife likes on me:

(1) man-gendered fragrances that smell good to her (there are not that many)

(2) man-gendered fragrances that make me smell fresh and clean (there are many)

(3) women’s fragrances that smell good to her and that she thinks are “almost for men” or “should have been for men” (surprisingly many)

It’s interesting that my wife sometimes thinks masculines “should have been” feminine and vice versa. My suspicion is that these are what we perfumistae would otherwise describe to each other as “unisex”, but my wife simply doesn’t have this concept in her highly gendered and somewhat authoritarian fragrance worldview.

That’s OK – I simply transform fragrances from her worldview to mine and vice versa.

So – where were we? Ah, yes. Galop d’ Hermès.

Back when Galop d’Hermès was introduced, I very quickly figured out that the bottle was supposed to be a stirrup, because “horsey stuff” is a thing at the House of Redneck. My wife doesn’t have any Hermès stirrups, but the ones she does have, that go with her non-Hermès French saddle, really look a lot like them.

While I’m not a rider, or at least not much of one, I’m an enabler of my wife’s Euro-style riding hobby. I built her a kind of “hobby horse” to store and display her saddle and other gear, and I routinely accompany her to the “maison équestre” to help her pick things out. I bought her an Hermès saddle pad, and helped her find the right saddle, steering her to a French model not only for sinister Francophilic reasons, but because I know her taste better than she does, and I act towards it when she wanders too far into “trying things” or “not caring” in ways that I know will ultimately make her unhappy.

I’m her “guardian motorcycle rider“. I understand these things, but from a slightly different perspective.

Anyway, Hermès stirrups are sleek, modern, metallic, and I love them. While I would not go so far as to describe myself as a stirrup fetishist, I would not argue with the description of Hermès stirrups as sexy, in an Hermès way. My fellow Hermèsophiles know exactly what I’m saying.

Hermès design and aesthetics are centered around an idea which seems extra-snobbish to some, but is actually rather profound to those of us who think life is too short to enjoy all the beauty that “___” has left for us to behold. One might describe it as “everyday is actually very special – let Hermès help you luxurify your daily life in that way”. Now you may not think that a 1000-euro selfie stick is the way to do that, but SOMEBODY does – right?

Sorry, just kidding. Without looking at the catalog, I can tell you that there is no such thing. There is an Hermès drone for taking selfies, but it’s not “real Hermès” – it’s some Canadian company scamming on the name.

So no. Just no.

However, Hermès has a beautiful man’s ring that looks every bit like some little hex nut that affixes your bathroom plumbing to the bottom of a toilet tank, and I want it badly.

But again, just kidding about the toilet stuff. That particular nut was superseded by hand-tightened plastic a LONG time ago.

THAT RING is a combination of the winky side of Hermès, along with their very wonderful way of taking inspiration from all sorts of things and “keeping it fresh”. Their Toolbox fashion jewelry series is actually quite nice, very subversive for a “handy” guy like me, and while my octagonal silver ring from Tiffany & Co. is somewhat similar, it is unwearable while using tools, so the stainless steel Hermès ring is still very tempting.

No – the real Hermès is daily luxury, daily art, daily lifestyle, and an insistence that there is a smooth continuum of these things which none of us has to abandon – ever. Ralph Lauren is very much like that, and a whole lot cheaper at the mass market end, so obviously I’m a huge fan. But when I really want to get my design-in-daily-life jones on, and pay a little extra for cutting-edge edge, Hermès is the stuff.

So Hermès stirrups. BECAUSE Hermès.

Now, my belaboring of all this stuff about the Hermès aesthetic has more of a point than merely explaining my love for the stirrupy bottle, or making jokes about selfie sticks. If you don’t believe ME that Galop d’Hermès is decidedly “Hermès” in that “omnipresent art and utilitarian luxury” way, then you can believe perfumer Christine Nagel, in an interview HERE:

https://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/8944/introducing-galop-dhermes-the-scent-of-modern-luxury

“I’m seduced by Hermès’ femininity,” Nagel continues to explain, “it’s very interesting because it is bold, elegant, and based on tactile strength. You really need to go to an Hermès store to see it but, if you wear a piece of Hermès, it gives you an allure, a certain look. The Hermès woman has elegance and panache, but also this feeling of well-being because the textures are comfortable, well chosen. They are clothes that you wear every day; as Pierre-Alexis Dumas says, “we support women in their daily lives. We don’t do eveningwear, we make clothes to wear day-to-day.” It’s different – and these are all values that I try to place in my perfumes.”
-perfumer Christine Nagel, via Olivia Singer in AnOther Magazine

The point profoundly impacts what kind of fragrance we’re talking about here, and almost certainly why I’m wearing it. Galop d’Hermès doesn’t smell “little black dress”, and it doesn’t smell “evening gown”. It smells like a lady or gentleman out riding, shopping, driving, or dining elegantly but casually the day before the night.

Rose is an interesting floral component. It used to “be” more masculine than it is now, just like iris used to “be” more feminine than it is now. Thus, STYLISTIC TIME helps to gender rose just a bit, adding onto whatever component algebra adds up to “masculine” or “feminine” in the sniffer’s mind.

Perfume component gender is historically dynamic – it’s culturally fluid – and I would argue that it’s that way because to a large extent it’s storybook – it’s associative and it’s social. Some might even say unreal. IMO, marketing gender is based upon some set of real, deep, cultural if not anthropological gender preferences at the component level, but it’s also quite clear that working artistic component “gender” is largely “historically and socially associative” BEYOND those deeper preferences.

In the case of Galop d’Hermès, viewed from our own perfume culture at larger scale, the style is modern, and that brings the rose slightly toward the feminine, while the primary LEATHER component works toward a masculine character. The fruity component (quince) works with the rose to lean feminine, but there is a definite smoky character, from whatever source it comes from, which brings things back toward masculinity.

Note, of course, that there are counterexamples to ALL of these fluffy generalizations – c’est le parfum.

Overall, Galop d’Hermès ends up in what I would call “guy-wearable feminine territory”. Mostly women are going to want this one, but guys who like rose fragrances can easily get away with it, and not smell like they’re wearing an obviously “feminine-marketed” fragrance.

Galop d’Hermès smells more fancy than it does female. Among us perfumistae, it’s unisex.

In the same way that Etro Manrose is a guy-leaning unisex rose that is perfectly wearable by women, Galop d’Hermès is a femme-leaning unisex rose that is perfectly wearable by men.

Thus, when my wife first smelled Galop d’Hermès, she had no idea if it was a designated masculine or feminine, and I wasn’t really telling her. Neither was the Hermès associate, who – in order to sell an Hermès feminine to a man – mentioned that old canard about perfume smelling differently on men’s and women’s skin. In the case of Galop d’Hermès, men’s skin allegedly brings out the leather, while women’s skin brings out the rose.

Technically, this difference is true, but the reason is purely psychological. Allow me to explain how this works.

Men’s and women’s skins are basically the same. Although men and women do tend to apply perfumes differently, as long as they are applied on skin of the same level of cleanliness, oiliness, and enzymatic activity, the fragrances will experience roughly the same environments. Oily, dry, wet, cool, hot, dirty and clean skin all behave somewhat differently, but oily man skin and oily woman skin of the same oiliness, temperature, humidity, and biological activity are pretty much identical.

However, SMELL is incredibly psychological. Just TELLING people something about a fragrance CHANGES what they will sense by the time their BRAIN figures it out. Indeed, just telling somebody that a fragrance smells LIKE something will change the way they smell it.

And GENDER of the WEARER tells people something. A very BIG something. Thus, when people smell a fragrance ON a person, they will SMELL IT DIFFERENTLY, depending on the gender of the wearer, as they LOOK FOR ASSOCIATIONS.

Once people recognize a scent on themselves or others, it is possible to recognize the fragrance, independent of who is wearing it. But even then, it will smell differently to people, KNOWING the gender of the wearer, and there is NOTHING that can be done to change this, absent a determined mental EFFORT to null out gender associations, which is – quite frankly – extremely difficult.

One of the reasons that I love Galop d’Hermès is the fact that – ON me and TO me – it smells more like a leathery, fruity, sweet and smoky rose fragrance, than it smells like any kind of leather fragrance.

It smells a bit like a Manrose flanker, or an Hermès analog of Gucci Guilty Absolute Pour Femme – another guy-wearable leathery rose fragrance.

I don’t particularly like leather fragrances, other than a few that have strong citrus and nutmeg aspects, which I particularly enjoy. Coach Leatherware No. 01 and the old Tiffany For Men are my idea of what a real leather fragrance for men should smell like. Hermès Bel Ami would be a STRONG masculine leather. For women, any version of Cuir Fill In The Blank will do.

Everything else is something else to my nose. For instance, the wonderful Hermès Kelly Calèche strikes me as a leathery floral, not a floral leather. Maybe to some that’s nonsense, but to me, it says that Kelly Calèche is primarily a floral scent – NOT a leather fragrance. Despite what everybody else – even Hermès – seems to think.

Translating this to Galop d’Hermès means that – TO ME – the fragrance is mostly a rose scent, and leather is a modifier.

Now – something very interesting about Galop d’Hermès, which I credit to the Hermès salesperson. There REALLY IS a balance to the leather and the rose, and that balance is well within the range of human fragrance psychology. I have proven this to myself by smelling Galop d’Hermès as EITHER a rose fragrance OR a leather fragrance, mere seconds apart. Concentrating on one or the other, I can repeatedly smell it primarily as either a rose fragrance (which is somewhat “female-side unisex”) or as a leather fragrance (which is more on the masculine side of unisex).

This is an ability which I highly recommend cultivating in oneself. It’s a bit like the knowledge that it’s perfectly OK to move around a statue in a museum and examine it from different perspectives.

Because I am much more of a rose person than a leather person, my dominant perception of Galop d’Hermès is that it is a rose fragrance. Nevertheless, my thinking is that “leather people” are going to love this one, because they will very likely experience it as a floral leather.

An excellent comparison fragrance for Galop d’Hermès is Jean-Claude Ellena’s Hermèssence Rose Ikebana, which I believe was used by Christine Nagel as a kind of “house reference” in making sure that Galop d’Hermès stayed “on message” as an exemplary Hermès fragrance, and perhaps even as a nod to Jean-Claude.

Hermès alleges (at least, in my blurb that came with the fragrance) that the primary pairing of components in Rose Ikebana is rose and rhubarb, but my wife is having none of THAT idea. She has an unerring nose for tea, and the moment she smelled Rose Ikebana, she called out “matcha” – Japanese powdered green tea. Hermès does admit elsewhere to some kind of tea component in this one, I believe. Certainly, IMO, the rhubarb note here is far less obvious than the same note in Hermès Eau de Rhubarbe Écarlate, also by Christine Nagel. But beyond this point of contention, we know that good Jean-Claude LOVED to put his tea notes into everything, BUT that he also felt the whole industry was conspiring against him in this endeavor, mostly through a kind of shortsightedness about how much people LOVE tea fragrances done right. So forgive me if I half-suspect that our boy JCE pulled a fast one, sandbagging the prominence of his tea notes in Rose Ikebana for the ad copy. If not that, then perhaps it was decided that an identified tea note was simply TOO stereotypical for the marketing, and thus the marketing concentrated on a less “Asia stereotypical” note to go along with rose.

No matter what, consider this all background for the idea that Galop d’Hermès is much more obviously feminine than Rose Ikebana, despite that fact that Galop d’Hermès sports a leather jacket and Rose Ikebana serves tea.

Suede. Whatever. I don’t get picky about the difference, personally, although I admit that there IS a difference, and that it’s useful as a descriptor.

Galop is a more noticeable and nose-catching scent than most of Jean-Claude’s works. A side-by-side comparison with Rose Ikebana quickly demonstrates the relatively extroverted nature of Galop in comparison.

However I should also note the extreme prevalence among my fellow Basenotes comrades of a kind of anosmia to Galop. This has been mentioned many times by Basenoters and other perfumistae – so much so, that it’s clearly NOT people’s imaginations. I have encountered it myself.

In my experience, the way to “get over” this anosmia is to wear a really good dousing of Galop at least once – maybe three sprays (or more) to the body, under the clothes, getting some ON the clothes, and one spray on each hand. Before this experience is over, you’ll be smelling just how pervasive, radiant, and omnipresent Galop actually is.

I will attempt to explain why this works.

Galop demonstrates a certain property that was first showed to me by Basenoter DULLAH years ago for Creed Windsor (later to be known as Royal Mayfair) – the preservation of the rose note by applying to clothing instead of skin. Presumably skin has some kind of temperature, enzymatic, or absorbency property which shifts the balance of rose fragrances away from components that make rose notes prominent and easily identifiable. By simply applying some of the fragrance to clothing, a long-lasting and readily identifiable rose note is obtained.

Secondly, applying fragrances to the back of the hands or the wrists is an old trick for overcoming olfactory fatigue, as it provides a condition of maximally changing concentrations AT the wearer’s nose. Strong airborne concentrations of the components will come and go, thereby overcoming the olfactory fatigue of certain components which we experience, and which can be almost indistinguishable from complete anosmia for them.

Lastly, it seems true to me that many people are hampered in first encountering any fragrance, by imposing a kind of expectation upon its performance – that it “should” only take a certain number of sprays to smell it strongly and richly. What I say to that is remove all doubt. Spray PLENTY of it, and you will smell it PLENTY GOOD.

So combine ENOUGH SPRAYS – including ON CLOTHING and AWAY FROM THE NOSE, and you will be guaranteed to learn what a fragrance actually smells like.

I have used this same technique very successfully to “learn to smell” many individual fragrances, including Bleu de Chanel EDT.

Once one CAN smell Galop, one sees that it is not really a “clubbing” scent, in the LOUD and ATTENTION-GRABBING and ALL-CAPS WAY. But in the same way that Christine Nagel’s Eau Intense Vetiver flanker of Terre d’Hermès has more oomph than the original, Galop d’Hermès is a much more striking scent than Rose Ikebana. Galop is, as others have noted, a return to certain “old Hermès” olfactory values, from Jean-Claude’s life-long love affair with transparency, while still remembering much of Ellena’s legacy and influence.

One of the joys of Galop, in that respect, is that it’s not just a mixture of rose and leather. It’s not just a floral – and a leathery floral – it’s also a fruity floral. In fact, I find ALL of the following aspects present:

rose
leather
fruity
sweet
sour
spicy
woody
waxy

The fruity aspect of Galop is restrained, so it never seems like a “typical” fruity floral. The sweet aspect is likewise very light, so it never seems even remotely cotton-candyish or juvenile. The sour aspect merely modifies the fruitiness at a level comparable to the sweetness, giving the fruity aspect a mature complexity. Ditto for the spiciness and the woodiness, in terms of improving the rose note.

The waxiness – less of a note than a kind of omnipresence – is reminiscent of a certain aspect of Slumberhouse Zahd. Yes – THAT was a weird one. The waxy redness of Zahd is not as strong in Galop, but it’s there.

There is an opening floral freshness which is very enjoyable. While the freshness loses its obviousness, it remains as a kind of brightness, keeping the rose from ever becoming dark or dirty.

There is one point about Galop d’Hermès, which I find somewhat humorous, in terms of identifiable aroma chemicals. I could have sworn that I was smelling Givenchy Play Intense in my bedroom and bathroom, and could not understand where it was coming from, until I realized that I was picking up something in the base of Galop, now permeating our house due to my heavy wear of the stuff lately. Play Intense is one I have not owned in years, having swapped it for the regular Givenchy Play in a kind of “the grass is always greener on the other side” move. I often wish that I still had my bottle of Play Intense.

The note I detected from Play Intense is something which may or may not be “coffee wood” or “amyris wood”. Whatever it is, that note shows up, with perfect aroma chemical clarity, in several other fragrances, including Paco Rabanne 1 Million and Donald Trump Empire.

So yes, the idea that Galop d’Hermès and Donald Trump Empire have a very distinctive but subtle note in common is a fun little factoid.

Another fragrance worth closer comparison is the previously mentioned Gucci Guilty Absolute Pour Femme. This is an outstanding yet somewhat unconventional (IMO) berry rose fragrance with patchouli and woods. It is STRONG STUFF – a real demonstration of the genius of the new head of Gucci, Alessandro Michele, who corralled perfumer Alberto Morillas into getting WAY out of the box, and demonstrating HIS genius.

And, of course, this fragrance is EXTREMELY unlike anything by Hermès, particularly Hermès in the Ellena phase. Nevertheless, as a kind of man-friendly femme rose, GGAPF is worth a closer look.

Where Gucci Guilty Absolute Pour Femme (hereafter GGAPF) relies on a combination of excessive diesel-like petrol leather and woody ambers to defeminize the very significant berry and rose, Galop uses a much cleaner and sleeker leather, which only has to work against a fraction of the fruitiness found in GGAPF. The Gucci is also much louder in the base, drying down to a very strong woody scent, nearly comparable in intensity to the beginnings of Galop.

Just like me, my wife finds it difficult if not impossible to call either one of this pair better than the other. Both of these scents are lovable in their own way, and can easily reside in the same collection without any feeling of duplication. And yet they are both “I’m a guy and I want to really scratch my rose itch today” options. They FEEL similar, even though they SMELL very different.

Perhaps it’s all just the amazing versatility of rose.

And thus we are brought, via a blatantly STOLEN header image, looking for “rose + Galop”, to its source – a wonderful interview with Christine Nagel, in an Australian web magazine called “Gritty Pretty” which I have never heard of until now.

INTRODUCING GALOP D’HERMÈS – THE NEW OUTSTANDING WOMEN’S FRAGRANCE

Just to make sure you can see that link:

HERE IT IS: https://grittypretty.com/fragrance/new-hermes-galop-dhermes/

I urge you to read this great interview. In it, one hears many of the same “talking points” from other interviews with Christine Nagel, about Hermès in general, and Galop in particular, but there is much more information here, about Nagel’s personal relationship with Hermès, and about what she was thinking with Galop.

Major kudos to author Eleanor Pendleton (who incidentally has two Jasmine awards!) for an awesome interview!

About

Finally, as promised, I want to deal very straightforwardly with the whole issue of men wearing “marketed feminines”, and to some extent, the reverse – women wearing men’s fragrances.

Women wearing men’s fragrances is quite common, yet you don’t really hear much about it, except on perfume boards. This is actually the secret of the whole thing – don’t talk about it, don’t worry about it. It’s not that women are NOT AT ALL self-conscious about wearing men’s fragrances – they are simply LESS self-conscious about it. They smell something they like, and that they think suits them, they wear it. However, if you are an astute student of psychology, and observe women talking about wearing men’s fragrances, you will sense that they are NOT totally unconcerned with what others will think about it. Au contraire, they are generally fashion-fluent on whether said fragrance will be a good thing or not to their life audience. They simply realize that there is a whole lot more “getting away with it” than men believe, and act quite casually within that knowledge. THEY KNOW THEIR LIMITS.

So that is my advice. Know your limits, and have fun within them.

In my opinion, if wearing a fragrance makes you feel nervous, self-conscious, or uncomfortable in any way, then you should NOT be wearing it. What’s the point? Fragrance should make you feel good! Preferably, in my opinion, it should make a lot of other people feel good, too, although there are many wonderful people who are absolutely unconcerned with what others think about their fragrance choices or levels of wear. Whatever! It’s your life – make choices and LIVE WITH THE RESULT. Change your choices if you don’t like the result.

Personally, I LOVE people who stink up elevators HUGELY with their perfume, and I LOVE people who gasp and cough in mock death when the people of the first type get off the elevator. BRING ME DRAMA! BRING ME VARIETY! Vive la différence!

Have I encouraged you yet? No? Let’s go for some more.

I have friends who think perfume absolutely must be worn at homeopathic levels in all public places, and I have friends who put on EXTRA perfume for funerals because the deceased loved their fragrance. I have to laugh at the latter, because the STIFFS are actually us still-living idiots who worry about not offending each other, when the DEAD GUY is proven to be the mensch by the lady who honors him by wearing her typically excessive fragrance for somebody who tolerated it gladly, and now can’t even smell it – or so WE ASSUME.

Yeah, think about THAT ONE.

So now that I’ve elbowed you HARD with some paradoxical reality, consider the reality of wearing fragrances that – statistically – the other gender LIKES ENOUGH to want to smell all the time. In some ways, it’s not a bad idea. This is why I love to drag my wife along when fragrance shopping, and USE HER to help pick out fragrances. Either that, or I bring samples home and test them on her. That way she never has to know if it’s “pour homme” or “pour femme” until she has already rendered some judgment about whether she would like to smell it on me.

Now, the fact that I may be wearing a “pour femme” that my wife likes on me, does NOT mean I will never offend anybody else with such a fragrance. The fact is, there are people who will be offended by ANY FRAGRANCE that you wear.

However, more likely than offense, are humorous mistakes.

In a demonstration of just how associative and gender-ludicrous fragrance actually is, I was once seated at a lunch table at work, wearing a labeled pour homme (Dior Eau Sauvage Parfum), when one of my friends at our table – who apparently assumed that the new fragrance he was smelling could not possibly be coming from any of us, but simply had to be coming from one of the ladies – began turning his head and scouting for said hot mama. For the remainder of the meal he kept looking around for some mythical babe from down in Marketing, when it was just this poker-faced dude at the table, marveling at the fact that his MEN’S fragrance did indeed smell like it COULD WELL BE coming from a C-level looker in a tight skirt, “doing lunch in the café” as they sometimes did.

Indeed, unisex fave TDC Sel de Vétiver, which my wife thinks smells like men’s hair tonic (she dislikes it quite a bit), had a similar effect in the elevator, when two women each assumed it was THE OTHER wearing the awesome new fragrance. However, in the interest of fairness, I have to mention that SdV was also – TWICE – mistaken for fresh paint when worn to meetings at work. C’est la niche! And I have to admit that fresh paint IS unisex, so they got that much right.

The most negative reaction I ever got from ANY fragrance was at a rest stop in familiar hillbilly country, when two good-old-boys took some kind of objection to allegedly unisex Hermès Un Jardin Après la Mousson. Although it did not occur to me at the time, these two may have been looking for some kind of action other than fisticuffs, since (to be completely blunt about it) the psychology of closeted homosexuality in that part of the country is complicated, but the locations (such as rest stops, lover’s lanes, and bars) are not. Nevertheless, there is still a greater likelihood, IMO, that they simply thought my fragrance was a bit too fancy, feminine, or unpleasant. Either way, I knew better than to pay them any mind.

Ain’t no foolin’ a boy who the land took a likin’ to! *wink*

Perhaps the most interesting and direct response I ever got to wearing a labeled feminine, was when I helped a young lady who was driving alone, and who stopped to get directions from me, out in front of my place. She could not suppress a delighted chuckle when she suddenly realized that I was wearing Chanel No. 5 (Eau Première, to be exact). I smiled and laughed with her, and that was it. We just continued the conversation, although perhaps a bit more relaxed, if anything.

And then there was that middle-aged woman who I caught wearing Terre d’Hermès in her summer dress at an outdoor art exhibit. Why can’t TdH smell that great on ME? Why can’t I forget this woman, or that moment – craning my neck just a bit, and then wandering around that area, trying to pick up more sillage? If only she had worn something more forgettable, I would not be pestered with these memories.

So far, no explicit reactions from anybody about Galop d’Hermès, although I HAVE caught a few people “leaning in”.

Women, to be more precise.