Eau d'Hermès: The First Hermès Perfume, Inspired by a Leather Bag
Hermès says its first perfume was Eau d'Hermès, made in 1951 by Edmond Roudnitska, who described it as the inside of a Hermès bag where a scent lingered.
- 01Hermès says its very first fragrance was Eau d'Hermès, created in 1951 by perfumer Edmond Roudnitska; the Osmothèque's 2015 collection list gives the same year and perfumer.
- 02Thierry Hermès opened his harness workshop in Paris in 1837, Hermès's registration documents say, so its first perfume came 114 years later by our arithmetic.
- 03Hermès quotes Roudnitska describing the inside of a Hermès bag where the scent of a perfume lingered, a note of fine leather with citrus fruit and spices.
- 04Hermès's US site still sold Eau d'Hermès in April 2026, as an eau de toilette listing lemon petitgrain, cardamom and cinnamon as its main raw materials.
- 05Hermès calls Calèche, composed by Guy Robert in 1961, its first fragrance for women; in 2019 it wrote that Eau d'Hermès appeals to both men and women.
Hermès made harnesses and saddles for more than a century before it made a perfume. When the perfume came, its perfumer described it as the inside of one of the house's bags. The house's filings and product pages, a national library record and an independent perfume archive fill in the rest.
What was the first Hermès perfume?
Eau d'Hermès, created in 1951 by the perfumer Edmond Roudnitska, was the first Hermès perfume, the house says. Hermès's US product page for Eau d'Hermès, as archived in April 2026, calls it "the House's very first fragrance". The house's French page of December 2019 says the same: "le premier parfum de la maison".
The company's annual filing gives that year a line of its own. Among the key dates in Hermès International's 2025 Universal Registration Document, the entry for 1951 reads:
The creation of the Eau d'Hermès fragrance marks the founding of a new métier.
Hermès International, 2025 Universal Registration Document, key dates
The 2021 edition of the document carries the same sentence. A 2013 Hermès press kit for Épice Marine, a perfume of its Hermessence line, puts it this way: the story of Hermès "begins in 1837", but "the olfactory adventure started properly for Hermès in 1951 with Eau d'Hermès composed by Edmond Roudnitska".
An outside archive agrees. The Osmothèque, which calls itself the world's perfume archive, lists Eau d'Hermès in its collection list of June 2015 as a 1951 eau de toilette by Edmond Roudnitska. No Hermès perfume on that list carries an earlier launch year.
Who created Eau d'Hermès?
Edmond Roudnitska created it, and Hermès called him "the perfumer-composer" on its US product page of June 2019. The Bibliothèque nationale de France's authority record describes him as a "créateur de parfums", a creator of perfumes. It dates his birth to 1905, with a question mark, and his death to 17 June 1996.
By 1951 he had already composed for Dior: the Osmothèque's list credits him with Diorama in 1949, and later with Diorissimo in 1956. Dior's Eau Sauvage page, as archived in 2019, says he composed Eau Sauvage in 1966 at Cabris, a town in the hills behind Grasse. It calls Eau Sauvage the first men's fragrance from the house of Dior.
Dior adds that Eau Sauvage gave a floral note, Hedione, "a masculine interpretation" for the first time. That molecule's own story is told in Hedione and Dior's Eau Sauvage. Roudnitska also wrote about his craft: the BnF lists five titles by him, from L'Intimité du parfum (1974) to Une vie au service du parfum (1991). His peers appear in our guide to famous perfumers.
What does Eau d'Hermès smell like?
Of leather, citrus and spice, in its perfumer's words. On its 2019 US product page, Hermès quoted how Roudnitska described the perfume "at the time":
The inside of a Hermès bag where the scent of a perfume lingered.
Edmond Roudnitska, quoted on Hermès's US product page for Eau d'Hermès, 2019
The quotation goes on: "A note of fine leather wrapped in fresh trails of citrus fruit, seasoned with spices". The French page gives the first line as "L'intérieur d'un sac Hermès où flottait l'arôme d'un parfum", with "fine peausserie" for the fine leather. No source we read says which wording came first.
Hermès has since reworded the line. Its 2026 page says the perfume evokes "the inside of a Hermès bag in which the aroma of a perfume lingers". The descriptions differ from one source to the next:
| Source | Date of the text | How it describes the scent |
|---|---|---|
| Edmond Roudnitska, quoted by Hermès | "At the time" of creation, quoted in 2019 | Fine leather in fresh trails of citrus fruit, seasoned with spices |
| Hermès, US product page | 2019 | A citrussy, spicy, floral theme; "Powerful, sensual composition" |
| Hermès, US product page | 2026 | Lemon petitgrain, cardamom and cinnamon; olfactory emotion "Spicy, Dry" |
| Osmothèque, collection list | June 2015 | Family hespéridé (citrus), subfamily épicé (spicy) |
Of these four, only the perfumer's description mentions leather; the 2026 page does not name it among the notes or the main raw materials. Cardamom and cinnamon are two defining notes of the spicy family, while the archive files the perfume under citrus first.
Why did a harness maker start making perfume?
No Hermès document we read gives a reason; the house presents perfume as one more trade, added in 1951 to a business built on leather. Its registration document says that between the wars, "under the impetus of Émile Hermès, the House opened up to other métiers, while retaining a close connection with the equestrian world". A golf jacket, jewelry, a silk scarf and a tie followed, each dated in the timeline below.
Perfume arrived 114 years after the first workshop, by our arithmetic from the house's two dates. The 2025 document opens its history in 1837, when "the harness-maker Thierry Hermès opened a workshop in rue Basse-du-Rempart in Paris".
The bag in Roudnitska's line belongs to that first trade. The 2025 document says Leather Goods and Saddlery, "Hermès' original métier", groups bags for men and women with saddles and bridles. Its revenue in 2025 was €7,070 million, 44 percent of the group's sales, against €489 million, or 3 percent, for Perfume and Beauty.
Leather and perfume had met before. Grasse's perfume trade grew out of its tanners and their scented gloves, as our story of Grasse explains.
A timeline of Hermès, from harness to perfume
Every row is dated by Hermès itself or by the Osmothèque. The main source is the key dates in the house's registration documents for 2021 and 2025.
| Year | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1837 | Thierry Hermès, saddler and harness-maker, opens his workshop in Paris | Registration documents, 2021 and 2025 |
| 1880 | His son, Charles-Émile Hermès, moves the workshops to 24, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and opens a store selling bespoke harnesses and saddles | Registration documents |
| 1925 | A golf jacket, the first ready-to-wear garment | Registration documents |
| 1927 | The first piece of jewelry, the Filet de selle bracelet | Registration documents |
| 1937 | The first silk scarf, Jeu des omnibus et dames blanches | Registration documents |
| 1949 | The first tie | Registration documents |
| 1951 | Eau d'Hermès founds "a new métier"; Robert Dumas, a son-in-law of Émile Hermès, takes the helm of the house | Registration documents; Hermès product pages; Osmothèque |
| 1961 | Calèche, by Guy Robert, the first Hermès fragrance for women | Hermès Calèche page; Osmothèque |
| 2020 | Beauty becomes the house's 16th métier | Registration document, 2025 |
| 2025 | Perfume and Beauty earn €489 million, 3 percent of sales | Registration document, 2025 |
The 2013 press kit says Calèche arrived "ten years later" and calls it "the first women's perfume from Hermès". Hermès's Calèche page, archived in March 2025, dates it to 1961, as the Osmothèque does. That title does not make Eau d'Hermès a men's perfume: the house's US page of 2019 said it "appeals to both men and women".
Is Eau d'Hermès still sold?
Yes, as of the latest archived copy of its page: in April 2026, Hermès's US site sold Eau d'Hermès with an add-to-cart button. The page lists it as an eau de toilette, made in France, in the Parfums-Fondateurs collection, which "draws inspiration from the House's heritage".
The bottle keeps to the equestrian world. The page says it is "inspired by the lanterns of horse-drawn carriages", with "a black cap reminiscent of a riding hat". The Calèche page describes the same bottle, and says Calèche's name echoes "the carriages that are emblematic of the House".
Hermès still names a house perfumer: its 2025 registration document calls Christine Nagel "the Hermès perfumer". Louis Vuitton's first perfume had a different fate, told in our story of Heures d'Absence. How other houses began in perfume is compared in our guide to the first perfumes of fashion houses.
Part of Eau Facts, the Fragnatique team's series on fragrance history and science, also told in short videos on Instagram at @eaufacts. Researched from the sources listed above, drafted with AI assistance and checked against each source before publishing.
Frequently asked
- When was Hermès founded?
- In 1837, in Paris. Hermès's registration documents say the harness-maker Thierry Hermès opened a workshop that year in rue Basse-du-Rempart. In 1880 his son, Charles-Émile Hermès, moved the workshops to 24, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where harnesses and saddles were made to measure beside a new store. The house's first perfume, Eau d'Hermès, followed in 1951, 114 years after the first workshop by our arithmetic.
- Who was Edmond Roudnitska?
- A French perfumer. The Bibliothèque nationale de France calls him a creator of perfumes and dates his life from 1905, with a question mark, to 17 June 1996. Hermès credits him with Eau d'Hermès, its first perfume, in 1951, and Dior says he composed Eau Sauvage in 1966. The Osmothèque's collection list adds Diorama (1949) and Diorissimo (1956) for Dior. The BnF also lists five titles by him, among them Le Parfum (1980).
- Is Eau d'Hermès for men or women?
- Both, by Hermès's own description. Its US product page of 2019 said the perfume appeals to both men and women, and the French page said it is meant for men as much as for women. The same US site files it under The Women's Universe, in copies from 2019 and 2026. Hermès gives the title of its first fragrance for women to Calèche, from 1961. Labels aside, the house names lemon petitgrain, cardamom and cinnamon.
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