Eau de Vert (2005)
by Miller Harris

A pale, attenuated sweet green accord lasts all of ten minutes before drifting off into a bland powdery vanilla and clean musk drydown. Eau de Vert offers all the pleasure of spraying on perfume without actually having to smell anything.

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz does this kind of thing orders of magnitude better in her exquisite Celadon. Buy that – it’s cheaper.

19th April, 2011.

When I first heard of Eau de Vert I had high hopes. Just the Vert in the name is enough to make me interested. I am fond of three other "Verts": Hermes' Eau d'Orange Verte, Creed's Feuille Verte, and Miller Harris' Tangerine Vert. And then there was the description I read at the Miller Harris website. The notes were described as "mountain herbs, pine, lavender, juniper and artemisia, that are abundant in the South of France, mix with rose, geranium, moss, musk and vetiver"; again appealing to me. The website also said Eau de Vert was "inspired by the chic man with the slicked-back hair of the 1950's South of France" and that it was a "classic fougère". Again, I was fine with these descriptions.

Then I tried it (twice actually). It caught me off guard. The opening was not what I expected at all. I was expecting the opening to bring a bright herb/pine/green presence. Instead the opening accord was best articulated by the words "slicked-back hair" from the Miller Harris website. Not really the hair, but the "slicking agent": pomade or what I would call "hair grease". This was rather disappointing, as it was dense and heavy and did not convey at all what I was looking for from a Vert or the notes described. So it feels very barbershop to me. With time, other notes emerge. First, I detect deep green notes, with a bitter tinge. The bitterness subsides. The opening accord diminishes, but never really goes away. Mossiness emerges. At this stage, it is not too bad, but the opening ruined it for me. I am not saying this is an awful fragrance, just not at all what I expected. I am giving it a neutral rating, as it might be work for someone else.

23rd July, 2009.