Hermès Un Jardin sous la Mer Blends Tiare Flowers and Mineral Notes

For Un Jardin sous la Mer, Hermès moves the idea of a garden below the surface of the water. Created by perfumer Christine Nagel, the fragrance brings together mineral notes, tiare flowers and tamanu nuts. Its organising image is a coral garden, with the relationship between sea, sky and vegetation carried through the scent, bottle and illustrated packaging.

Hermès Un Jardin sous la Mer bottle with a rounded clear cap and glass graduating from deep blue at the base to pale green above — The collection’s lantern bottle carries a graduated blue-green finish, echoing the passage from lagoon to sky. © Studio des fleurs / Courtesy of Hermès.

The house connects that visual world to the waters around Taha’a, near Tahiti. Blue becomes the unifying element, shifting from the depth of a lagoon towards the lightness of an open horizon. It is a setting for the imagination, giving the fragrance a point of departure without reducing it to a conventional account of a landscape.

Two white tiare flowers and a green leaf in a still life divided into horizontally offset bands — Tiare flowers are among the fragrance’s named notes. © Jean-Marie Binet / Courtesy of Hermès.

The collection’s lantern-shaped bottle translates the idea into glass. Graduated colour moves through different intensities of blue, allowing light to become part of how the object is seen. The form remains recognisable within the Jardin family, while the treatment of its surface gives this composition its own character.

Artist Aino-Maija Metsola develops the same theme for the box. Her watercolour illustration uses soft outlines, light textures and vivid shades to evoke Taha’a’s landscape. The image creates a connection between the solid perfume bottle and the more fluid world that inspired the presentation.

Brown nuts arranged against a pale background in a still life with horizontally offset bands — A nut still life accompanies the press kit’s account of tamanu in the composition. © Jean-Marie Binet / Courtesy of Hermès.

The accompanying press book adds another creative voice. Nicolas Chemla’s atmospheric text moves between an island and an underwater garden, describing a moment when colours, plants, minerals and marine life appear to reflect one another. Anne Brugni’s illustrations extend this imagined world, while photographs in the supplied press material are credited to Studio des fleurs and Jean-Marie Binet. Together, they establish the creative setting around Nagel’s composition.

An orange branching coral form shown against a pale background in three horizontally offset sections — Coral supplies the visual metaphor for this imagined garden beneath the sea. © Jean-Marie Binet / Courtesy of Hermès.

Un Jardin sous la Mer is presented as an eau de toilette in 30 ml, 50 ml and 100 ml sizes, with a 200 ml refill. The details bring the idea back to an everyday object: a familiar bottle, a considered use of colour and a fragrance built around a garden that can only be imagined beneath the sea.