L'Ombre des Merveilles Hermès 2020

I love this soooo much! For me, it is so evocative of the early 1970s, not the perfumes of the 70s but the early 70s themselves. It makes me feel happy and carefree.

The tea note is gorgeous and realistic, like a cup of freshly brewed tea. I tend to love tea notes for their calming effect, and this fragrance is no exception. Ombre des Merveilles opens with this sense of peace and relaxation, which is wonderful. The tea also brings a hint of smokiness, which enhances the incense vibe of this fragrance.

I think it's the incense vibe from the frankincense which makes this fragrance so reminiscent of the early 70s. This is not a church-y incense, as the tonka takes it out of that territory. It reminds me of the many variations of incense used in shops and salons whose proprietors wanted to be perceived as "hip," and the kind my teenage cousins, who I thought were SO cool and grown-up, burned in their rooms, which smelled very good- spicy, smoky and slightly sweet.

To be clear, Ombre des Merveilles doesn't smell like incense so much as it creates an incense-like accord, but the tea keeps it fresh and light.

Ombre is definitely not a retro kind of scent. It's minimalist but not simple, modern, unisex and versatile. IMO, Ombre has the same sophisticated quality as the rest of the line and retains the same warmth, although there is a definite freshness to this fragrance.

Regardless of whether folks remember the early 1970s or associate with them the same things as I, many would probably find this fragrance very beautiful, relaxed and easy to wear.

For me, wearing this takes my own, personal past into the present, bringing with it many beloved ghosts and the sense of the kind of freedom we only experience in childhood, while still being a "grown-up" fragrance. Ombre des Merveilles is just the best!

This review is based on a full bottle of L’Ombre des Merveilles that I bought from Aura Fragrance recently. Though I had tested this previously in a Hermes boutique, I would still call it a blind buy as I had not formed a definite opinion about it before.

L’Ombre des Merveilles opens with a strong incense blast, coming from frankincense and tonka according to perfumer. But this is not the deep frankincense that we are familiar from good incense perfumes like Garcon Manque from Givenchy. Here it smells very light, airy and artificial. Same story with the tonka. I miss the sweet syrupy tonka note that I know from some of my gourmands. Most surprisingly, the black tea note is not discernible to me anywhere in this perfume. I confess that black tea is not a strong note for me as I don’t get a strong aroma when I smell black tea as dry leaf or in hot water. I wonder people here are parroting out what every other reviewer said. Some may be perceiving aromas that don’t exist in this perfume, such as Earl Grey (primarily bergamot essence) and Jasmine tea. I know that L’Ombre des Merveilles does not project black tea anywhere close to Gris Charnel. It appears that many reviewers have simply copied the marketing language directly from Hermes website.

I don’t see a whole lot of development in L’Ombre des Merveilles. The generic incense continue through the heart notes into the base notes. The base notes on my skin are softer, still mostly incense but now with a slight nuance of woody notes.

The performance of L’Ombre des Merveilles is excellent. I can smell it clearly on my skin even after ten hours. As typical of most scents, my clothes retain the heart notes much longer. The soft base note last for a few more hours. The sillage is good up to a few feet during first 3-4 hours.

All this leaves me a bit conflicted about L’Ombre des Merveilles. Is it a top tier perfume, or is this a cheap scent hiding behind the Hermes label? After my initial use, I cannot recommend this perfume. It is too linear and too simple to be an attractive investment. If my opinion changes with successive uses, I will update my review accordingly. Hermes has been a difficult house for me as I don’t have any favorites from them. For my nose, both Jean Claude Ellena and Christine Nagel are very ordinary perfumers. Ellena is a great writer, whose books I recommend. I have Terre D’Hermes, Twilly and now L’Ombre des Merveilles from Hermes. But I am not likely to reach out for these perfumes, when I have BDK, Givenchy, Guerlain, Frederic Malle, Xerjoff and many other great houses available to me.

I will pre-preface that I wrote the entire review and it got deleted, so this one isn't as good as the original and I was just not having it before I even started.

I will also preface by saying that this might not be the best season to review L'Ombre Des Merveilles. When I first heard of it, Monika Cioch talked about it around autumn or winter. As far as I recall, she also prefers this scent during the colder months. However, you know my spiel of being behind on reviews and I actually did receive this during winter, but alas, a summertime review it is!

Luckily, after weeks of sun and high temperatures, today is colder and rainy. So L'Ombre Des Merveilles might get a fairer chance.

I remember when I first swatched this on paper that it smelled like Coca-Cola. Sweet, fizzy and caramelly.
On skin, however, there is the reminiscent note of Cola, but it is mostly the tea note that I get. L'Ombre Des Merveilles is very surprising. It is simple, but it doesn't remind me of anything that I have smelled before. And is perfectly unisex. Nothing is too feminine, nor is it rough around the edges to become masculine. It is somehow delicate even though I doused myself in it. Because my review got deleted, I mostly remember it being stronger with tea and with a note of incense. Now, completely dried off, I get mostly incense with a tea note in the background. The incense is very mild. Its smoothness reminds me of Santal Austral from Matiere Premiere (if I recall correctly), but the tea note just gives it that sourness, that ompf, that compliments the scent perfectly and makes it stand out.

I keep reaching back to my memory of my prior review, but I cannot recall what I wrote and I am losing momentum reviewing L'Ombre Des Merveilles. This bothers me a lot, because I had only good things to say and I had written how the scent evolves during dry down.
What I can add is that even though I thought this would be an autumn and winter fragrance, I can see myself wearing it all year round!

Sometimes when writing fragrance reviews you need to understate things so you don't come across as a addled fanboy with a crush for whom everything is a "masterpiece" whilst you assign God-like status to the perfumer concerned. The problem with that is that when something truly rocks your world it can be hard to express it without coming across over-effuse or even obsequious. All the more so when the fragrance concerned isnt especially highly rated or generally considered to be any of the adjectives you have bubbling up in your brain like an aquifer when you smell it.

Christine Nagel is one of my all time favourite noses and I will not apologise for being positively disposed to her work because I've not come across anything she's done that I haven't really enjoyed. Some perfumers just make sense to me and Christine Nagel is one. L'Ombre Des Merveilles by Hermès is classically Nagel in that she takes a theme, a feel and she approaches it in a different direction. She can reimagine things in really creative and unexpected ways. LODM is a classical fresh tea fragrance with an airy top, but reimagined. You'd expect to have a citrus, bergamot in the head and perhaps something woody or some labdanum to ground the base and LODM cleverly has neither of these. It isn't what you would expect by looking at the notes.

The black tea is incredibly fresh but the incense in the heart is what makes it that. The base is a little bit of smooth tonka that sits very much in the background to add just faintest hint of something akin to cola, but also miles away from cola. The star of the show here is how the incense pushes the tea sweeter and fresher but also adds a very unexpected ozonic, aqueous feel. It is unlike any other tea fragrance I've smelt, nor it is anywhere near any other incense fragrance I have gotten my nose on.

Incense and tonka isn't usually fresh and effervescent like this is. It is so clever, so original. But we arent buying fragrances for the sake of their undoubted artistic value so I have to ask whether this is something I would wear. The answer is a resounding, heartfelt yes. It has the projection and presence to make it an all day wearer and will hold its own at night as well, but goes with anything on pretty much anybody. I love this. It is right up my street. You wouldn't think tea and incense would be an easy dumb reach but this is as easy to wear as anything in my collection.

Three Word Summary - Black Tea Masterpiece

Layering Suggestion: over the top of Meteore by LV. Absolutely awesome.

Outfit Suggestion: shorts, t-shirt and loafers whilst running errands for when you want to be easily the best smelling person in the supermarket.

Scent - 10/10
Sillage - 7/10
Drydown - 7/10
Bottle/packaging - 8/10
Performance - 7/10

39/50

Even though it is a unisex fragrance, however, the fragrance is charming and SEXY for Men NIGHT Occasion and FALL Season.

Night Occasion: you will feel calm, relaxed, and elegant. May give bright confidence.
Fall Season: you will feel breezy, calm, and relaxed, and enjoy the fall season. Not too much if I say that the fragrance is suitable also during the WINTER season.

Quite an Underrated fragrance of all time.

Just see my rateS for this charming FRAGRANCE OF NIGHT-FALL...

with love,
rasia unggol