Rites de Passage

It begins with a journey to Istanbul. Amid the clamour of the Grand Bazaar and the spice swirling through the old market, the creator lived that trip as a personal rite of passage. The perfume is dedicated to nomads, to people who never settle, to spirits that slip out of reach.

Pepper, cinnamon and saffron open with a warm, prickling heat that looks back to Constantinople as the old gateway to the East, lifted by bergamot and grapefruit. From the bazaar's spices the scent drifts toward the smell of old, precious cloth, and at its centre rose and jasmine meet the calm resin of elemi and the dusty edge of Sichuan pepper. That dryness reads as nostalgia.

Vetiver, patchouli, incense, tobacco, oud and cedar build a woody, resinous, deep base. Having moved from herbal medicine to perfumery, the creator treats perfume as olfactory memory. The drydown is the end of the road: alone with oneself in a mystical corner of the city, with a bitter, smoky trace left behind.