I’m on a Zoom call with Christine Nagel and she is trying to show me a photograph, through the screen, of her crouching low over a pile of horse dung clutching at what looks like a length of rubber tubing attached to a goldfish bowl. ‘This is me in the stable,’ she explains, ‘to capture and analyse the scent of manure. When I say we really used it as an ingredient, I’m telling the truth.’

Christine joined Hermès in 2014, before which there would have been very little chance of the Swiss-born nose ever getting up close and personal with a horse — let alone using its poo in a perfume. ‘I didn’t grow up with horses and used to be very scared of them. Even now, I sometimes still feel a little bit of trepidation,’ she says. ‘After more than 10 years, however, I’ve had to overcome that fear bec

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