Hermès; A Beautiful Garden Under The Salty Sea

Deep on the ocean floor, maybe in our imagination, grows a surreal garden made up of only the most magical flora and fauna the planet has to offer. The queen of the salty ocean bed is the majestic Tiare flower, which sits next to the Tamanu nut tree, where the delicate flower shades herself under the tree’s large green leaves. This beautiful dream-like scene may not be reality, but it is part and parcel of the notes that make up the new perfume. Meet Un Jardin Sous la Mer by Hermès here in Hermès; A Beautiful Garden Under The Salty Sea

Un Jardin Sous La Mer Hermès

In this new perfume from Hermès, their perfumer Christine Nagele explores, via her imagination, what a mythical underwater garden would smell of. A bridge of artistry, where lush tropical flora meets a mineral, aquatic setting. Here, the Tiare Flower melds with the Tamanu nut, both encased in a mineral wash of salty sea water.

New Perfume 2026

The Tiare flower sounds almost like a fairytale note in perfumery. So delicate is she that she opens her face to the light in the morning, but by nightfall two days later, she fades quickly, having fulfilled her duty and is no more.

The Tiare Flower

Creamy white and pinwheel-shaped, it is extremely fragrant. Native to the highland shores of the South Pacific, it is used as a bloom in flower necklaces. Its name, Tiare, is actually the Tahitian name for a flower and so translates as flower flower.

The Scent of the Tiare Flower

Its scent? A rich, intoxicatingly creamy, and sweet white floral, almost velvet in texture, hints of sweet honeyed vanilla, think of coconut-kissed sun-warmed skin, melded with floral notes of Jasmine, and Gardenia. But add to that a sort of luminosity, a solar light if you like, from a tropical sky.

The Tamanu Tree and Nut

As for the Tamanu nut oil, it is extracted from seeds that grow on a tropical evergreen called a Tamanu nut tree. Highly prized in natural skincare and medicine for hundreds of years by certain Asian, African, and Pacific Island peoples, it thrives in sandy, coastal environments across Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and East Africa.

Nut Note in Perfumery

Noted for its pungent aroma, which is often described as a deep, earthy, and intense nuttiness. Don’t be fooled into thinking of sweet creamy nuttiness, but rather robust, complex, and slightly bitter notes. These trees are often found near the sea due to their need for sun, but also because they have a natural resistance to the salt spray from the beach waves.

And it is the poetry of this meeting, one that can only happen in imagination, that brings these two notes together. Although the Tiare flower does not grow in the water or even by the sea here in this elixir, she meets with the nut that does grow by the sealy edge, and there the three mingle like the best of friends. Did Captain Nemo smell this meeting in the famous underwater book by Jules Verne? After all, Two Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, was also a story from creative thinking.

In this perfume, think of an imaginary underwater garden around the island of Tahaʻa in French Polynesia. This scent was actually inspired when Hermès perfumer Christine Nagele travelled to the island. Described as a magical, unspoiled land where mountains and reefs, plants and corals converse in perfect harmony. Here are warm, nutrient-rich, and shallow lagoons, protected by barrier reefs and coral islets. And from her unique experience, she bottled her ‘imaginary-yet-real’ perfume.

‘Just a few steps out from the shore, I discovered a whole new world – a veritable underwater garden shimmering with life and filled with dazzling colours, where dancing coral called to mind tiare flowers in the wind.‘

Christine Nagel, Hermès perfumer

The Perfume Opening

Think a bright, sharp, zingy sunshine of an opening, which then starts its journey towards airy, fresh white florals.

The Perfume Finish

As it shifts and journeys, it moves into creamy, tropical, and floral facets, here from the majesty of the Tiare flower, a slight salt-breezy facet of ozonic mineral notes, and of course, both are supported by Tamanu nut, bringing her a nutty, slightly oily depth, for the coral reef addition. Musk, at the end, adds the comfort of the sun on the skin, bringing the scent to its finale

Sunny yet cool, bright light and refreshing, sheer and airy, that moment you enter the water’s edge on the beach, where sun streams down, and light hits the waves as your toes meet grains of sand, and tiny aquatic life reminding you of the garden deep down below.

A fragrance from artistic thinking, but a subject noted clearly in Jules Verne’s book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas that contains famous, vivid descriptions of underwater ‘gardens’ particularly in the coral forests of the Red Sea and the underwater scenery of the lost city of Atlantis. And now that this has been bottled, we can smell the images not just from the book but from the imagination of the perfume’s mind.

An illustration from Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1866-69) drawn by Alphonse de Neuville.

The new juice is from The Hermès Parfums-Jardins collection,  a series of unisex fragrances created as ‘olfactory strolls’, if you like, the capturing of the essences of gardens around the world.

As with each of the Parfum-Jardin, the House invited an artist to illustrate the box, giving them carte blanche to create a poetic expression of the garden through drawing. The bottle is also refillable.

Find all you need to know about the new perfume at Hermes.com here

If you enjoyed reading Hermès; A Beautiful Garden Under The Salty Sea, then why not read Fall In Love With Japanese Cinema here

.Cent Magazine, London. Luxury Mindset