Love Hibiscus: Amouage’s New Secret Garden Fragrance
Amouage has never been a house that settles for the obvious. With its latest release, the Omani High Perfumery once again proves this point. Love Hibiscus, the newest addition to the celebrated Secret Garden Collection, brings a vivacious and mysterious new dimension to a range that has, since 2016, redefined how the maison speaks about femininity.
A Collection Built on Contrast
The Secret Garden Collection has always paired a floral heart with a gourmand facet, a formula that has kept the range distinctive in an increasingly crowded segment. Renaud Salmon, Amouage’s Chief Creative Officer, explains that this pairing was never negotiable. Each new perfume had to honor the same code that shaped the collection from its start. For Love Hibiscus, however, finding the right floral note took time. Salmon considered several options before the answer arrived from somewhere unexpected, and much closer to home than he initially realized.
Why Hibiscus Tells an Omani Story
Living in Oman surrounded Salmon with a landscape rich in hibiscus blooms, instantly recognizable for their bold color and delicate, crepe paper like petals. He came to see the flower as a natural fit for the Secret Garden. Hibiscus itself is a difficult note to pin down. Many varieties carry no scent at all, and those that do reveal a profile that is tart, faintly earthy, and gently sweet. The character becomes clearer once the petals meet hot water, releasing herbal, woody, and softly bitter notes reminiscent of red berries. Salmon insisted this complexity be preserved in full, which meant the gourmand note paired with it would need equal intensity.
From Childhood Pastries to Perfume
For the gourmand side of the composition, Salmon looked back to his own upbringing in France. His mother, a cookery teacher, often prepared flaky pastry, and the offcuts frequently became palmiers, coated in caramelized sugar and impossible to resist. Their buttery, crumbly richness offered the contrast Salmon wanted against the sharper hibiscus note. He later noticed that the word palmier shares its root with palm tree, and palm trees line the landscape of Oman in their thousands. The connection between his childhood in France and his adopted home became, in his words, a genuinely delicious one.
Building Love Hibiscus With Jérome Epinette
To bring this vision to life, Salmon partnered with perfumer Jérome Epinette, composing his first fragrance for Amouage. His reputation for balancing bold, contrasting materials without losing their individual character made him an ideal collaborator. The result opens with hibiscus and salted caramel presented almost side by side, tart and buttery in the same breath. Passion fruit bridges the two accords, while frankincense smooths the transition with its warm, woody glow. Sandalwood, cypriol, and vanilla round out the base, giving the scent the depth needed to feel indulgent rather than simply sweet.
Love Hibiscus Joins Four Established Icons
Love Hibiscus now stands alongside four existing Secret Garden fragrances, each built around its own contrast: Lilac Love with cocoa bean, Blossom Love with amaretto and cherry blossom, Love Tuberose with Chantilly cream, and Love Delight with honeyed Middle Eastern sweets. Together, the five scents tell an evolving story of contemporary womanhood, and Love Hibiscus adds a notably bold new voice to that narrative.
A Bottle Designed to Match the Mood
The fragrance sits inside the reimagined Secret Garden flacon introduced in 2024, finished in a striking hibiscus red. A special ceramic treatment gives the bottle a tactile, almost peach-skin texture, tying the design back to nature while making it especially inviting to hold. Campaign visuals come from art director Jade Lombard, photographer Charles Negre, set designer Juliette Zakowetz, and production house Lambert Lambert, with artwork created by Louise Mertens.
Where and When to Find It
Love Hibiscus arrives in stages. It launches first at Amouage’s Nordstrom New York pop-up and on amouage.com from March 1st, followed by US boutiques from March 16th, then Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea from April 1st, with worldwide distribution from April 15th, 2026. The 100ml eau de parfum, at 20 percent concentration, carries a recommended retail price of 395 USD, 365 EUR, 320 GBP, 1,450 AED, or 140 OMR, depending on region.
A Fitting New Chapter
Love Hibiscus captures something Amouage has built its reputation on: the ability to hold two opposing ideas together without letting either one dominate. Tart and sweet, mysterious and inviting, Omani and French, the fragrance moves comfortably between contrasts. It arrives as a confident, well-judged addition to the Secret Garden, and one that further sharpens the collection’s ongoing portrait of modern femininity.
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