Reviews of Terre d'Hermès (2006)
by Hermès

This might be just be a horrible reaction to my skin chemistry, but to me Terre D'Hermes smells of three things:

- red dirt with heavy clay content
- tomatoes, on the vine
- stewed tomatoes in a can (with that metallic / minearlic tinge, maybe from the "flint" notes)

Now i'm pretty sure "tomato" isn't in their pyramid of notes, so I'm guessing this is the "pepper" notes hitting my nose horrifically wrong. And I get no citrus in this whatsoever, no amber, no vetiver. It's just clay, tomatoes, and a faint metallic tinge. As you might guess, I find this completely revolting. Albeit it has tempted me to rub some garlic on my other wrist and hang out in Gilroy, CA.

Dry orange. Dry dirt. What seems to inhabit this minimal landscape the most is hype and the fertile imagination of the wearer. Proof that less is not simply more but something like a mirage. Just keep saying "Jean Claude Ellena."

I just don't get the appeal of this at all. Its so dry it hurts my nose and its really very linear. Not that being linear is always a bad thing but this is just vile! Non pour moi!

This one is the antithesis of what I look for in a fragrance, so of course I can't give it a positive rating. As others have said, it's dry, austere, harsh, etc. I'd much rather not wear any fragrance than this. If you have never sampled this kind of fragrance, do not buy it "blind" because so many BNers like it. I just wonder where the thought that something like this should exist as a fragrance originated. Perhaps with a certain kind of skin chemistry this one might be acceptable, but on me it's got the "bug spray" note going in full force.

Silly rubber cap which sprays a silly smelling fragrance. The ingredients don't seem to go together at all. Musty weird smell. Not my cup of tea. Thumbs down in a big way.

Orange, cedar, cedar 'n more cedar.....whats the big deal????

I cannot believe the universal praise this fragrance gets.

The opening is ghastly, though fascinating in a macabre sort of way.
A bitter sour orange is thrown at you, mixed with some woodsy tones.
The sum of all the parts smells really synthetic, to me it smells what blue colored pastry would taste like (I never dared eating odd colorerd cake, so I am not sure)
It takes a very long time before it settles into a quieter scent, so you have to get up early, say 3 hours before you leave the house.
And when it finally has settled down, it smells very familiar to me: a somewhat softer DKNY men, honestly it smells almost identical.

Yes Terre d'Hermes is more complex than DKNY Men, which is a very linear scent, but I can live without the bitter orange splash.
Anyone who likes the dry down of Terres d'Hermes should get a bottle of DKNY Men.

Maybe this scent is a great example of skin chemistry but I think it's a clear example of how noses smell things differently. I smelled like exactly what I smelled on the card. Fast Orange Industrial Cleaner. It was over powering and it was the only note I got from this cologne. Not saying it's a smell I hate, it's just not how I want to smell. It certainly is not classy.

On the other hand, my girlfriend didn't mind it. She said it smelled citrusy but had a hint of something earthy and fresh. She didn't particularly care for it compared to other colognes I wear though.

I know a lot of people like this one but I do not think it's skin chemistry that makes it different from person to person. I think a lot of people smell this one differently, so having someone think I smell like rotting oranges on a park bench, cigarettes, dirt, gasoline or bug spray is not a gamble I really want to take. If this is what you decide to wear, you will smell like industrial strength cleaning solvent to me, and I don't think skin chemistry has anything to do with that.

Footballers scent. Sits right at the back of my cupboard, alongside the Brut.

I went to Nordstrom today specifically to try this one on since I saw that it won the best men's fragrance award. Since the start, I could smell nothing but the geranium and a hint of orange. I was hoping for a burst of citrus like John Varvatos' Artisan or D&G's Masculine. I don't know if my nose is hypersensitive to geranium but I've had it on my wrist for over 3 hours so far and I still smell almost nothing but geranium. My mom loves geranium. I should introduce her to this one.

For some reason I keep being drawn to these Ginger accords.

It often seems to catch my eye on the shelf. I put on some protection, I do it one more time, and I am disappointed again.

There is a reason this one seems to be the leading fragrance on the "For Sale" thread here on Basenotes.

I think it would be much more pleasant that if instead, someone could put Mary Ann in a bottle...

I just don't get the hype. The scent never develops; from minute 1 to 1000 it's exactly the same: dirty orange synthetic gasoline.
It does not jive with my skin AT ALL. I kept trying to come back to it, but I have never been happy with it.

While I was vacationing in France this winter, it seemed as if every other young guy passing by was wearing Terre d'Hermes. It got played out really quickly.

This scent might be cutting-edge and popular, but I cannot see it being in production for much longer.

Wow. Way too strong for me, it makes me sick. I can't get past the plastic/synthetic smell in this.

LOL, I can't believe this won the Best Fragrance for Men in the 2008 Basenotes awards! I recently found this site, and yesterday I made a list of fragrances to try based on the award winners. So I went to the Hermes shop this morning and decided to check this one out. It smelled good on the test paper, and also had an interesting citrus smell on my skin at first. Maybe 20 minutes after I sprayed it on I was sitting at a dining table waiting for my lunch to arrive with my chin propped up on one hand. I soon found myself thinking, "I smell insect repellant." I had to laugh when I remembered that I had sprayed on the Terre d'Hermes and realized that's what I was smelling! In my view, "expensive insect repellant" really is the best way to describe this fragrance. The color even matches!

How could anyone actually like this stuff! The guy below got it all WRONG this stuff does absolutely not smell anything like navel oranges! This crap just Flat Out Stinks!!! I had one girl tell me if I ever wore it around her she would PUKE!!! The actual smell of this poison is Pickles and Wet Naps! I bought this blindly due to the good reviews but I wore it once and it still gives me nightmares.

Hi, hello, everyone - all around the World - concerned with scents!

It's my 1st. post here - helas I would prefer a positive one BUT regarding TdH I just cannot! IMHO - and of corse in my skin - it starts confusing, it goes dirt and it ends up so strongly oriental/spicy that reminds me the heavy religious church ambiance of my childhood - and it sticks so heavy in my skin that is impossible to wear. Of corse I must state that I found a curious similarity between perfums and Port Wine: being good or not good is not the point. The point is ONE'S CHEMESTRY and there are superb Port Wines (those aged...) that I my stomach can't stand, on the other hand there are young PW that I love (LBV's and Vintages, or even Vintage Character's) SO similar things happen with scents...!!!
Sorry - can't stand Terre d'Hermès.

Well, how can I best describe this fragrance. Ok, bear with me, by a bag of navel oranges, making sure there are some over ripe ones included. Now peel all the oranges without worrying too much about the peel oil spraying on you (that's actually essential). Once done, don't wash your hands (or face, depending how close you peeled them). Let dry e voila, Terre d'Hermes. This will save you $50 and doesn't come with the additional desinfectant scent of the original.

Strong, peppery, overwhelming, nauseating, rotten, overrated frag ... you can choose.
Want something fresh, natural, light, clean and from the Hermès-house?
Buy Eau d'orange Verte!

I'm going to need a 3rd time for this one but so far it came off as STRONG, orange, peppery and overwhelming. Way too much and headache inducing. The second time I tried it it was a little better. Considering I like others that are allegedly similar I just don't get it. I definitely think this one could be one that grows on me later but right now, this is it.

Huge, fat peppered orange peel to me. I don't enjoy being on the verge of sneezing all day. There is also no development and all there is is the bitterness of dirt. Since this gets gets so much praise I recommend you try this before buying.

Way over ripe oranges floating in dirty semi spoiling milk. No way for me.

plain and simple....overrated.

jesus christ people, if you are going to go goo-goo ga-ga make sure that the fragrance stands out in any way. Bought it stricly off great reviews on basenotes and all i got is a rotten orange left on an old bench smell.

Y'all were right.
Lime, lemon Pledge, and cigarettes.
Not for me.

Very distinctive and original, but I don't like it at all.
GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR wrote that it smells like a smoker who just peeled an orange, and that's a superb description!
The combination of orangepeel and ashtray reminds me of the content of a garbage can. Sorry, but that's nauseating to me.

“A woody, vegetal and mineral eau de toilette” (from Hermes website)
Terre D’Hermes opened with a very strong and synthetic lemon blast. It developed a sweet wood note (cedar? birch?). These two notes ping-ponged back and forth in a tiresome way. It became big and rather obnoxious. This did not appeal to me. I like woody scents and appreciate good citrus notes; this had neither in my opinion.

Imbalanced. Reminds me of Baldessarini in that it has a nice base, but the damned citrus-fruit-candy hardly gets out of the way for me to smell much of it. And so I'll wear out my samples of both, on those days that I don't mind smelling like a silly fruit hiding a good heart.

As much as i tried to make friends with it , it just couldn’t happen.
On my skin it almost felt like I was wearing some sort of household cleaning liquid, and not one that smells good.
I appreciated the mineral notes in it but the rest seemed almost like been there done that and I truly felt that it didn’t bring too many new things into play.
I guess it’s all down to personal chemistry, right?, I mean on my skin the top notes turned an acrid, very sour, pungent, even too aluminum like grapefruit, and I mean the white part of it not the juicy, less sour body of it.
I was very discouraged about this one since I am a big Hermès fan, but hey, there are plenty of Hermès offerings that go very well with my skin and that I don’t like this one doesn’t make me less of a fan. A lot of times I like to be challenged and this time, fate had it that it was not for me. I still got a bottle of it, who says I can’t use it for air freshener or even for a gift.?

I tried this today, based on the positive reviews here, and came away rather nonplussed. It's both fruitier and sweeter than I expected. Unfortunately, it reminds me strongly of some gelatine type sweets ("candies" to the U.S. guys) I knew as a kid, which makes the whole experience a bit off-putting.

I sprayed a TdH tester on my wrist this past weekend at Neiman Marcus in Atlanta. While the scent was interesting there was a familiarity that I just couldn't place. The longevity and sillage were both strong. After about an hour, it dawned on me. The fragrance was very similar to ........ pickle juice! But not real pickle juice - more like the 'scratch and sniff' pickle scent I remember as kid (some game I had as a child had a bunch of scratch and sniff dots on it).

This one's not for me.

I found the pepper and benzoin combination to be so incongruent it gave me a severe headache. I think this is what robyogi was referring to when he described it as being like old wax fruit or cedarmoth's description, "An old shoe grinding a baby aspirin into a gravel road". It also reminds me of those paper-strip sachets they sell in Italian grocery stores. I do appreciate the citrus/woods going on, but I much prefer Déclaration to this.

i hate to break the chain of thumbs up
but in my very own opinion this scent is very heavy and dense and litterally smells like semi-clean dirt...terre....
i prefer the orange...
could have added a hint more of sweetness

Traveller, beware!
You should definitely NOT BUY THIS BLIND!
To me it smells like some grapefruit dessert(smells somewhat creamy to me), seasoned with some pepper and then spread on dirty ground.
Has very strong sillage and longevity though (only sprayed once on my wrist and everybody smelled it).
In essecence: Try before you buy!

Hermes-a world of refined luxury and sophistication.Great scents like Derby and Bel ami and now this!?Terre d´hermes-nice advertising, very promising is a simple and vulgar fruit basket-orange and grapefruit,sour smell-it does not dry down to my opinion-it stinks the whole day and badly!It´s spicy and sweet, superficial and simple but on a high level.Again a huge deception-i mean l´eau d´hermes was a great work,the same as the first female scents but Terre d´hermes is a deep deception.Ellenas composition ends up in a chaos and mass!A perfume this is chanel ( cuir de russie), tabac blond(caron), A-man(Mugler)etc. But Terre d´hermes is a disappointment on a high level but the bottle is nice.At least one point!

An old shoe grinding a baby aspirin into a gravel road.

I concur with Helder. Nice for 30 minutes, and maybe lasted 2 to 3 hours tops. But after that, really, I can not detect it. Warm perhaps, but really, I could not distinguish anything about this cologne. Now, your mileage may vary, but I'll not think twice about thumbs down on this. Not bad, but how can you say something is bad if you really can not smell it?

I swear I previously entered this review but it disappeared when we moved to the new site. Here it is again, as I still feel the same way...

Since the moment I first opened the Hermes mailer containing my sample of this fragrance I have tested it hoping that I would like it. I really did want to add this Ellena creation to my wardrobe, if only to have something for the office, something citrusy, something lighter, something easy-to-wear, something mineralic. Taking the advertising materials and the early reviews at face value, my hopes were set for this scent to be something of a holy grail.

How disappointing to encounter the real Terre d’Hermes and not the one of lore. The more I test it, the more I dislike it. The grapefruit is one of this scent’s worst components - it borders on annoying, and never disappears from topnotes to basenotes – it is also the most prominent note. It's not a clear, crisp grapefruit, but rather a waxy, almost synthetic grapefruit that reminds me of the wax fruits my great aunt has on her kitchen table.

I usually like scents said to be “mineralic,” for example, Creed's Vetiver (1948). Here again, I am disappointed as I compare marketing, advertising, and hype to my experience. I don't get minerals or wet stones as the marketing folks at Hermes and fans of this scent claim. What I do get is, again, that plastic or wax-like feel, one that seems to lay on top of the skin rather than meld with it; an opaque quality that makes me feel like the scent is the one in control, using me as its canvas.

As to the development...I don't get much. This is usually the case with scents that just sit atop my skin, slowing drying down with the typical, boring gaining-vanilla drydown common to many designer fragrances. On the plus side, it does last a good while. Then again, maybe that's not such a plus, as longevity is a good thing only if one likes the fragrance.