The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Nu Green arrived in 2008 as part of a five-fragrance natural collection from Honore des Pres, the Parisian house that treats perfumery like a creative experiment rather than a commercial exercise. The nose behind the entire line was Olivia Giacobetti, a perfumer known for compositions that favor clarity over complexity. For Nu Green, the brief seems to have been radical simplicity, a fragrance built from botanical materials that could capture the sensation of green without the usual artifice. Giacobetti worked with mint, tarragon, green grass, ambrette, and cedar. No heavywoods, no resins, no dramatic arc. Just the essence of fresh and the quiet confidence of someone who doesn't need to shout.
What makes Nu Green unusual isn't what it contains but what it refuses. Most fragrances in the green category lean into construction, blending materials to create an impression of freshness that outlasts the natural volatility of botanical ingredients. Nu Green leans the other way. The mint is mint. The grass is grass. The cedar that settles in the drydown is present, warm, and clean, not stretched to fill eight hours. Ambrette, derived from musk mallow seeds, provides the base note, a botanical musk that reads as skin-like rather than animalic. It's a composition that trusts the materials to do exactly what they do, without synthetic amplification.
The evolution
The opening arrives quickly: mint, bright and almost edible, followed immediately by tarragon's herbal, slightly anise-like edge. There's green grass in the first minutes too, not the abstract concept of grass, but the specific smell of a freshly cut lawn on a warm morning. It reads clean without being aquatic, green without being sharp. Within fifteen minutes, the mint recedes and the composition shifts toward its heart. The green grass note deepens slightly, taking on a more intimate quality as it blends with the ambrette. This is where Nu Green becomes most itself, the opening was the announcement, and now the fragrance settles close to skin. The cedar arrives in the base, soft and warm, but never dominant. Within two to three hours on most skin types, the fragrance has fully dissipated. Nu Green doesn't leave a trace. It simply stops. The next day, there's nothing but the memory of something clean that was there and then wasn't.
Cultural impact
Nu Green sits comfortably within Honore des Pres's broader philosophy of unconventional green fragrances. Released in 2008 alongside Chaman's Party, Bonte's Bloom, Sexy Angelic, and Honore's Trip, it represents the most minimalist interpretation of that collection's brief. Where its siblings explored floral warmth, spicy depth, or angelic sweetness, Nu Green stripped everything back to the essential sensation of fresh. The fragrance occupies a specific niche: it appeals to those who want a botanical scent that doesn't perform, doesn't project, and doesn't apologize for lasting only as long as it lasts. In a fragrance landscape that often equates longevity with value, Nu Green makes a quiet argument for presence over persistence.
