Terre d’Hermès 2019 Limited Edition: showing that bottles can be beautiful

It’s a conundrum all successful fragrance brands have to contend with these days: how do you maintain interest in your product, especially if that product has been around for a while and hasn’t actually changed for yonks?

Thirty years ago this wasn’t a consideration in the same way it is today. For one thing, there weren’t as many brands competing for the same shelf space as there are now. There certainly weren’t as many launches and there were far fewer ‘flankers’ (variations on particularly successful fragrances) too. Most significantly, though, people didn’t have such short attention spans back then. We didn’t crave newness in quite the same way as we do now but, hey, that’s marketing and the mind-altering effects of social media for you.

Anyway, given that keeping interest going in your brand is so essential today you can see why many fragrance houses look to special limited editions to keep things fresh and dynamic and to grab a few column inches or, given the industry’s current obsession, Instagram stories. A few brands are masters of this (Gaultier and Dunhill to name two) but this year’s Limited Edition bottle of Terre d’Hermès is a masterclass in how to make an old bottle look both irresistible and collectible with just a few simple tweaks.

The work of English designer and illustrator Liubov Edwards, the bottle design features a raft of small metallic squares and diamonds positioned on transparent glass. Only half of the bottle is printed on each side giving a clever three-dimensional aspect to the design and, if you look carefully, forming a letter H. It’s brilliantly thought out and executed (the fragrance is all about the elements and the diamonds are meant to represent squares distorted by the wind) and, for me at least, is reminiscent of the early work of iconic graphic designer Peter Saville, particularly his work on early OMD record sleeves.

The fragrance itself, of course, is amazing (it’s one of the few contemporary fragrances worthy of the label ‘classic’) so the limited edition bottle is really just the icing on the cake, making it the perfect purchase for existing Terre fans whose current bottle is running a little low, or for those with slightly shorter attention spans just looking for something eye-catching to grace their bedroom dressing table. Influencers will be pleased to know it’s a dream to photograph too.

The 2019 Limited Edition version of Terre d’Hermès is available from February as both an eau de toilette and eau de parfum.

Note: all products are sent to me as review samples from brands and PR agencies unless otherwise stated.