Raiders of the Lost Scent: How to recognize HERMES perfumes.

Hermes is one of the greatest French fashion houses. Perfumes are well-known for luxury and quality. Here is the complete list of batch numbers since 1978.

"Decoding" batch numbers is not so simple, mainly for two reasons:
1- The code itself (missed letters, changing schemes during years), and:
2- "Erasing" of letters and numbers from the bottle. This point it's very important: unfortunately, until beginning of Nineties, Hermès used "painted" batch numbers on the bottom of most of bottles. These numbers are very easily "erased". This picture is an example (below):

This is a bottle of "Equipage", 2nd version. You can read the "painted" batch number: LE21. And this is OK. As you will learn later, it's easily dated "year 1989".
But have a look on this other bottle (below):

here you can see a bottle of "Amazon" (2nd edition), year 1990. Where is the batch number on the bottom? It doesn't exist anymore. Completely erased. Painted numbers, unfortunately are easily erased.
If you want to put a date on these bottles and you haven't the box, you are in big troubles.
You could even suspect it's a fake, when it's a genuine bottle.
Be careful with Hermes bottles "apparently" without any number or code.

Here's the
HERMES BATCH CODE

Since 1978 until 1999:
You have to check first and second letter.
FIRST LETTER = YEAR
SECOND LETTER = MONTH (A=January, B=February, C=March, etc)

First letter:
A---1978
B---1979
C---1980
D---1981
E---1982
F---1983
G---1984
H---1985
I---1986
J---1987
K---1988
L---1989
M---1990
-------------------------------------------
(here barcode appeared on the box)
-------------------------------------------
N---1991 (letter O not used)
P---1992 (letter Q probably not used)
R---1993
S---1994
T---1995
U---1996
V---1997
W---1998
X---1999 (letters Y, Z not used)

Since 2000:
shifting to another code,
you have to check the first number.
plus some box clues (i.e. address, list of ingredients/allergens)
so:
0--- 2000
1--- 2001
------------------------------------------------------------
(here address "rue Boissy d'Anglas" appeared on the box)
------------------------------------------------------------
2--- 2002
3----2003
4--- 2004
---------------------------------------------------
(here long list of ingredients appeared on the box)
---------------------------------------------------
5--- 2005
6--- 2006
7--- 2007
8--- 2008
9--- 2009
0--- 2010
1--- 2011
2--- 2012
3--- 2013
Please note this scheme is not "certified" by anyone; it's only a work made by a genuine fragrance lover.

...and remember to see "Tutorial Pics" for some help.

Previously we recognized, batch-by-batch, year-by-year:
-GUERLAIN perfumes ( here )
-YVES SAINT LAURENT perfumes ( here )
-CHRISTIAN DIOR perfumes ( here )
-GIORGIO ARMANI Perfumes ( here )
-VAN CLEEF et ARPELS perfumes ( here )
-CHANEL perfumes ( here )

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TUTORIAL PICS