Haystacks, Kindness, and Licorice: Why I’m Wearing Hermès Brin de Réglisse Today

I don’t wear “nice” perfume for World Kindness Day. I wear kind perfume. There’s a difference. Kindness has warmth and backbone, and today that smells like Hermès Brin de Réglisse on my wrists.

If you haven’t met it, Brin de Réglisse is not a candy shop. It opens with sheer lavender that feels ironed clean, then a twist of licorice slides in, inky and cool, and the whole thing sinks into a dry, sunlit hay accord. It’s the olfactive equivalent of loosening your collar and letting early afternoon light do the rest. No theatrics, no sugar crash, just texture and light. There’s a reason hay lovers keep circling this one when they want something that reads skin and sky rather than barn and brawn.

That hay is my nod to haystacks, of course, and not only Claude Monet. I’m thinking of Victor Vignon too, the less obvious choice if you like your Impressionism with a little grit. Tomorrow is Monet’s birthday, and I plan to keep Brin de Réglisse close. Impressionism isn’t about a photorealistic note list, it’s about edges that blur and colors that hum. This perfume does exactly that. The lavender is a wash, the licorice is a shadow, the hay is sunlight on stubble fields. Blink and it shifts.

What I love most is its restraint. Brin de Réglisse refuses the usual gimmicks of “kind” fragrances. No halo of white musk, no faux innocence. It’s contemplative, almost meditative, yet it has a flicker of mischief from that dark licorice thread. On skin, it reads like good manners with a sly smile. If kindness had a texture, it would be this dry-warm hay, and if it had a color, it would be the pale gold Monet chased across a dozen canvases at different hours.

Consider this your gentle nudge. If you’re marking World Kindness Day, let your perfume choose tenderness without losing character. And if you’re celebrating Impressionism tomorrow, a few mists of Hermès Brin de Réglisse will say more about light, time, and feeling than any note pyramid ever could.