Twilly d'Hermès Hermès 2017 Eau de Parfum

Beautiful, joyful and uplifting without being simple or super light. This is a great contemporary perfume for active people. Polished but not too strict. Intelligent but with a great sense of not cynical humor. I really like it.

I find it surprising that some people can't feel the ginger, to my nose a fresh just cut juicy ginger root is there on top from the very beginning into the base notes. I love it, I've been wanting to buy Sisley 3 for a while because of this fresh ginger, but here it is even better as it melts with soft fresh translucent tuberose. The sandalwood base is kept light too. And (this is great news) the fresh clean but not boring effect lasts and projects.

The only other perfume with a nice combo of ginger and tuberose that I know is the long lost Fragile by Jean Paul Gaultier, created back in 1999 by a very young Francis Kurkdjian, which of course I enjoy and admire. While Fragile is dense and has a spicy oriental base, Twilly preserves the freshness all the way, connecting with Hermes perfume aesthetics since ever. It is not only a Jean Claude Ellena's thing, if you think of many previous offerings of the house by other perfumers, the fresh effect was pursued long before Ellena's arrival. Think of Hiris or Amazone Eau de Fraicheur. I find most of Hermes perfumes fresh, even some of the classic are, my loved Caleche is much fresher and tart than other of its contemporary cousins. Of course there are a few exceptions like Parfum d'Hermes and Faubourg 24, but that is another story.

I'm so happy that Hermes finally decided to give a try to my favorite note, and that it has done it in a way that allows us tuberose lovers to find a new angle for enjoying it, one tuberose we can carelessly spray on for any daytime situation and season, totally inoffensive but full of personality.

What a gorgeous bottle! I like it very much. It invites you to smell what is inside.
The perfume opens with soft, fresh ginger. It is not a loud ginger, it is a quite one, ready to be open. After a while, tuberose makes its presence felt. It is not a sweet tuberose, it’s a spicy tuberose. A lovely flower mixed with oriental spices. All the composition is like an invitation in a garden full of tuberoses and spices where their smells intertwine.
The dry-down is tuberose sweetened by sandalwood with a hint of ginger.
Twilly is a beautiful and elegant, modern and classy at the same time. It smells comfortable on my skin. I am not part of the perfume target group and still like it. It is an optimistic and lively floral but I think it is for everyone.
Give it a try if you want something different. Nice!

Twilly is undoubtedly a product of the seemingly permanent trend towards pandering to mainstream tastes while staying true to the origins of its house. It's a tightrope that many of the French design houses tried to walk around the time of Twilly's release. Guerlain did so successfully with Mon Guerlain Eau de Parfum, which blended the house's trademark vanilla with a nod to Jicky's monolithic lavender note, while Chanel fell flat with Gabrielle Chanel Eau de Parfum, which attempted to freshen the house's famous jasmine note for a youthful audience, but toned it down to the point of bland floral irrelevancy. Fortunately, Christine Nagel's second composition since becoming Hermes' in-house perfumer is in the former category - a successful amalgamation of fashion and tradition.

Nagel is clearly working within her predecessor's paradigm of elegance and simplicity. She has also wisely chosen to follow Jean-Claude Ellena's example of accentuating the fresh, light top notes, while still creating a composition robust enough to display both character and longevity.

Where she departs is in her heavy emphasis on florals, rather than Ellena's trademark use of fruits and citrus. Nagel clearly signposted that shift with Galop d'Hermès, which revolved around a bold rose note, and has done it again with Twilly, which has a gorgeous rendition of tuberose at its heart. The shift in emphasis, while an outcome of individual style and creativity, also fortuitously places Twilly well within the contemporary trend of minimalist florals (Gabrielle Chanel Eau de Parfum, Gucci Bloom Eau de Parfum). And it's also the best of the current crop.

Twilly opens fresh and sharp, with sweet orange blossom and piquant ginger. The tuberose soon becomes dominant, but it is relatively tame, evoking coconut milk, honey and ylang-ylang, rather than the fleshy, carnal aspects for which it is well known. The base is creamy, ambery wood. Performance is excellent, with good projection. And the packaging is great - the bottle, miniature Twilly scarf, and bowler hat cap are as fey as can be.

All in all, Twilly is a refined and deeply likable scent that's easy to wear and smells great. It's fresh and youthful, yet simple and elegant - in other words, it's everything a mainstream scent from a respected designer house should be. Christine Nagel certainly had big shoes to fill, but with her second scent for Hermes, she's proved herself to be the right woman for the job.

- Review first published January 2018, revised July 2025

Twilly opens with a spicy ginger, not so juicy as fresh ginger, nor is it overly woody like an aged ginger root. This is a ginger that's as much spicy as it's peppery, which links smoothly to tart, aromatic bergamot and green neroli.

The tuberose soon arrives at the front, flanked by sandalwood and tonka bean, and the ginger gradually blends into the woody background. The tuberose here is extremely pure and white, devoid of any indole or animalic nuance. Because of the grainy texture of sandalwood and tonka bean underneath, the tuberose isn't really creamy or buttery, either. It feels more like white clay to me.

Actually, the tuberose is so lacking its typical voluptuous characteristics, and because of the grainy-powdery texture and the presence of bergamot, Twilly initially smells very much like a constructed, commercial orange blossom accord to me. And after multiple wearing, I still feel this way if I don't make the effort to distinguish the different notes.

Afterwards, Twilly doesn't go through any major shift. The fragrance feels a bit more milky and more musky with time, as the sandalwood shares more weight in the dry down. There's also a spicy, hay-like nuance of tonka bean getting through occasionally, adding a somewhat masculine fougere boost to this floriental concoction.

Twilly projects moderately during most of its 10-hour longevity on my skin.

I would describe Twilly as a modernised, streamlined floriental, with ginger and orange blossom as major accords. It feels much more dense, more opaque, sweeter and warmer than most Hermès releases in the past ten years. Since it's Christine Nagel's first widely available, mainstream pillar fragrance in Hermès, a such rupture in style is totally understandable.

Because of its extremely clean, abstract treatment of tuberose, and its commercial sandalwood-tonka base, I'm indifferent towards Twilly. Yes, it's an overall pleasant warm orange blossom, and not as sweet as most gourmand and fruitchouli, but except for the initial ginger burst, the rest feels more or less standard, and doesn't stand out among other Hermès pillar fragrances, in my humble opinion.

When I saw this perfume on the srugstore shelf and on the magazines , with its bowler hat shaped cap , I immediately thought to the famous movie with Alberto Sordi "Fumo di londra" and to the soundrack "you never told me". It's the spirit of London in a bottle : " swinging" but always traditional, modern and ironic, but classic too.
The maison Hermes usally made me dream of the Paris avenues , but this story is different.
At the firts spray I smelled a cloud of fizzy ginger , then I perceived a very light tuberose note, not at all heavy, intoxicating or too ladylike, but very feminin, anyway. Unfortunately, there's no base in this scent and , at least on my skin, I didn't smell the sandalwood and it's a pity.
Simple and basic with its traid of notes, this fragrance could seem a little poor, but it's quite pleasant. Funny the bottle, although I was expecting something more from a prestigious Maison like Hermes. But obviously times change...