It would not really be accurate to say I was worried about what perfumer Christine Nagel would do when she took over as house perfumer at Hermès. Plenty of other things keep me up at night, but not that. But certainly I wondered if Hermès would continue to take the bulk of my perfume-spending dollars, or if I’d have to find a new BFF brand to empty my wallet every so often. What I think of as the transitional fragrance duo — Eau de Rhubarbe Écarlate and Eau de Néroli Doré — that marked the passing of the baton from perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena,¹ added to the uncertainty, given that I lost interest in Nagel’s Rhubarbe Écarlate within 30 minutes but fairly quickly bought a small bottle of Ellena’s Néroli Doré (and I’m still sorely tempted by the matching body products).

But perhaps I was too quick to judge. Nagel’s first pillar outing, Galop d’Hermès, is darned good, and while it makes its own way, it also eases comfortably into the brand’s existing line up…

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