The perfume department on the first floor of Ginza Maison Hermès is home to an array of intriguing fragrances, blended by perfumers from a number of surprising ingredients. In fact, the scents wafting through the air here at Ginza Maison Hermès have inspired many such perfumes. The second-floor café is fragrant with the stimulating scent of herbs and spices, while a refreshing citrusy tang drifts through the rooftop garden. Every floor of the store is redolent of the materials used to make Hermès products, especially silk and leather.

People are often surprised to hear of the association that leather, for example, has with perfume. When Hermès perfumer Christine Nagel visited the brand’s leather vault, she was struck by the elegance and velvety texture of the suede-like leather known as Doblis. She paired an olfactory note inspired by this soft, supple leather with an opulent rose to create Galop d’Hermès, a fragrance that manifests the dynamism of a galloping horse. Two materials typically seen as polar opposites—leather and rose—are exquisitely balanced to bring out the best in each other. And in a nod to Hermès’s origins, the bottle is shaped like a stirrup.