Hermann à mes Côtés me Paraissait une Ombre

The night was very dark and the forest very dark. Hermann by my side seemed like a shadow. Our horses were galloping. Beware of God! The clouds in the sky looked like marbles. The stars were flying in the branches of the trees Like a swarm of firebirds. I am full of regrets. Broken by pain, Hermann's deep mind is void of hope. I am full of regrets. O my loves, sleep! Now, while crossing these green solitudes, Hermann said to me: "I am thinking of the half-open tombs;" And I said to him: "I am thinking of the closed tombs." These are the opening two stanzas of Victor Hugo's poem "A Quoi Songeaient Les Deux Cavaliers" ("What Were The Two Riders Thinking"). This poem was apparently the inspiration behind this offering from ELDO. After wearing Hermann over the past year and finally sitting down to read this poem I must say that I do believe that Mr. Bisch did an amazing job. Just like the poem that inspired its creation Hermann is a fairly dark work of art. This is not a fragrance that will lift moods for the majority of people, Hermann is not only dark but damp, ethereal, and introverted. This is a rainy day fragrance for when you don't need a mood boost but instead want to sit with your feelings. In the opening the Pepperwood really makes it presence known along with the rose. Very quickly the Pepperwood quiets down and a very beautiful Western incense sits in its place. The incense and rose take center stage with Geosmin . The Geosmin in Hermann gets a lot of attention and it's well deserved, it truly sets it apart to my nose. At no point is this fragrance an "aquatic" but Hermann is an amazing example of how a fragrance can replicate the smell of damp earth and petrichor and artistically apply it. This is a fragrance for fall and spring, day or night. I could also see myself wearing Hermann at night during the summer. But generally I think Hermann works best in moderate temps and cloudy days. Hermann has average longevity on skin, It's nothing to write home about but I have at no point felt let down. On fabric however Hermann seems to last incredibly long for me. Projection and sillage are average as well, however I have been noticed a few times wearing Hermann because it truly is unique. So while Hermann may not be leaping of my skin it's so unique that I believe it may stand out more compared to more mainstream fragrances, especially for men. Hermann is especially special for me because it was the first fragrance that really turned me on to rose. I'm a self admitted incense fiend when it comes to fragrances and I received sample of Hermann with an order from Luckyscent last year. It was love at first whiff initially due to the incense but very quickly the rose grew on me and has since led to my love and wear of several rose fragrances and it becoming a note I especially love. In conclusion, Hermann is great. Do I think it will be mass appealing? Absolutely not. Does Hermann tell a story? Yes! Does Hermann set a mood? Yes! Is Hermann unique? Yes! So for those reasons along with my personal experience Hermann is an absolute favorite of mine and I'd urge any fraghead to give it a whif. - 9/10 - Spring/Fall. Summer nights. - Location/Situation: London, England, April, 2AM.... You've stayed up all night working at your desk while it rained outside and now your work is done, you decide to open some windows and light some incense as you wind down for sleep. You notice you're alone and once again ask yourself what you value more, love or peace? - Song: Romeo's Distress - Christian Death

I got my 3.4 ounce bottle from Amazon, and right away it brought me back to being a closeted catholic boy going to midnight mass on Christmas eve. The priest is going nuts with the incense burning, spinning it through the air with his brass chain thingy like a weapon, doing infinity symbols and circles with the smoke, giving us a show. I am appalled and mesmerized. The other priests come through and fling water at us. I pretend to sing the songs and chant the chants. I go home bored, a little cold, and confused as to why he had to throw water at me. That is the smell of Hermann. Upon the first spray, I get mostly the resinous frankincense and rose absolute, though the rose is in no way feminine. It is a rather earthy, wet, genderless rose that kind of smells like the rose pink latte from TAZO, if you heated it up in a saucepan. I suspect that it is rose oxide due to its intense earthy quality, though the geosmin could be a contributing factor. It doesn't smell floral, it doesn't really smell like a freshly picked rose either. It smells like rose water that you would buy from an oriental market. I don't smell a lot of pepper or wood anywhere in the opening here, maybe that's my bottle. After about an hour or so the rose and frankincense are still very present, and they continue to be noticeable, but less so as the fragrance leaves me. The geosmin really takes center stage for the rest of the time and it smells like it does after it rains in the midwest. It's a little sweet, super earthy, ozonic, aquatic, and very pleasant. I don't really get any blackcurrant buds, though they are listed on the ELDO website. Idk about that one. I get a little wood, though I am not really very sensitive to base notes and I have a hard time distinguishing amber, cedar, sandalwood, vanilla, ambroxan, musk, and all of the other "regular" base notes when they're mixed in together. It could be pepperwood, it could be ambroxan, it could be both. Who care not I. Personally, if there was an oil parfum version of this fragrance, or an extrait de parfum, I would buy it. I would really recommend this fragrance for this fall. Wearing this fragrance, I feel like a sexy, mysterious cathedral, if it was a person.

***Update since purchase on 2/23/26 one month in*** So after owning this amazing fragrance for a month now, and although I do find it quite similar to L'eau Bleue D'Issey (which I also own), "Herman" is most DEFINATELY the better fragrance, although for the price L'eau Bleue D'Issey is superb for its pricepoint. Besides "Herman" smelling more refined, and probably leaning more "Center Unisex" vs Unisex-Leaning Masculine like L'eau Bleue does, the tenacity/longevity is FREAKIN' INSANE for "Herman" which is really surprising considering how clean and light this thing wears! I mean no joke, just last night I did 2 spritzes on my arm maybe an hour or 2 before going to bed and now it's nearly noon the following day and I can STILL smell it on my friggin' arm! Also, on clothes?? FOGETABOUDIT!! Lasts SEVERAL DAYS on clothes! I think folks may be giving "Herman" a "Moderate Longevity Vote" bc its NOT a super strong, in your face fragrance and again, it wears somewhat intimate and clean, yet has tons of nuance and is super well crafted. Im thinking my bottle must've Maturated quite nicely during the month since I first used it when I'd first recieved my bottle, but even then I was quite impressed with the longevity. My only regret is that I did NOT get a full 3.4.oz bottle vs the 1.7 oz bottle I ended up grabbing. Anyhow, "Herman" would make THEE PERFECT signature scent for guys and gals bc its super unique, interesting, innofensive and tenacious. "Herman" is giving my all time FAVE "Cold Incense" fragrance Serge Luten's - L'orpheline a run for its money that's fo sho! Lol! A 9 outta 10 fragrance within its genre Excellent work ELDO! Thanks to whomever took the time to read my review! CHEERS!!

This is something you smell on the favorite coat of your deceased humanities professor husband. Very sad, and somehow intelligent. I guess it could be unisex. It feels sexless, but in a way that reads to me at least as “faded” or subtle masculinity. It radiates a gentle camphorous menthol peppery scent at a slight distance, not so much “petrichor” as “humid breeze” but it still has that fall smell of wet leaves on pavement, and you’ll notice a faintly dark and woody musk when smelling head on. On someone else or in the air it smells like a slowly wilting rose on a sandy trail. Fresh, inoffensive, mineralic. I don’t know how to explain why it reads so intellectual. This is something Herman Melville (the name is quite a coincidence) would have worn, it smells like an undying passion for the sea that expresses itself through long hours sat scribbling in candlelit cellars, fleeting and charged and mysterious like a ghost or maybe a will o the wisp. Like a vampire but certainly not Dracula, more of a romanticized androgynous gentleman vampire who’s starved themselves of blood out of shame for existing. It’s got self loathing and manipulation written all over it but genuine rather than performative, like you can’t be anything except what you are and what you are is something born to sob and hide and then be extinguished. And it somehow does all that while feeling vast and borderless, like what a soul smells like, or an aural recording of 10,000 sleep deprived nights curled up beside a book with your nose turned at the world, it simulates some kind of vast inland empire, and it accomplishes all this while smelling most distinctly like a cough drop or printer ink or maybe pencil shavings

ELdO know how to make some really intriguing fragrance compositions, but this one especially stuck out to me (alongside trash, that's beautiful too). I'm not one to pick out specific notes except for the ones I dislike, but here, there is nothing to dislike. It's like a symphony where every note does it's own share of heavy lifting (except the rose: that one lingers like a dried bouquet in the corner of a castle room, in the sense that it doesn't really do much at all.) In memory, it reminds of a sauna, that's the first thing that came to mind, like a sauna where the colognes of the men in your family mingle with the sticky joint-pain-like balm covering the wood walls, soaking in the smoke and the smell of earth seeping through old baseboards. There's an airy smell of some local natural shampoo (sweetnes from calypsone and black currant.) Essential oils dropped into the water to be thrown onto the hot rocks bringing up the smell of patchouli. A very nostalgic and enticing fragrance that keeps making me sniff my tester and arm even more. On paper, Hermann is much sweeter (dried down), but from the bottle and freshly sprayed it's a deep deep, mysterious scent, very asexual, if that's a way to describe it. But I do get where people get the church, mossy woods sorta vibe - could actually use some insence or woody notes then though, other than vetiver. Anyway, love this, absolutely need to get it now. Good for both events and everyday, imbues into skin, gets very intimate when dried down. More a summer scent sure, but would also wear in the winter. All-rounder.