Varanasi
Saffron, temple resins and leather trace a night in Varanasi, from a handful of Ganges water to dawn.
Perfumer: Giuseppe Imprezzabile
Varanasi grew out of a 2017 trip to India, and above all out of the day water from the Ganges was held in cupped hands. The city is treated as a place of scent where the sacred and the ordinary sit side by side.
The official account reads like a ritual in stages. It opens on saffron, nutmeg and cardamom, spices described as warm and red. Rose and jasmine form the floral heart, while ambrette and cypriol give it a dusty, woody body; spikenard, incense and gurjan balsam then bring in the temple register, likened to a sadhu dusted in white ash.
Ambergris, with its watery and animal edge, runs underneath the whole composition. Toward the end, oud, vetiver and a leather accord evoke a night around the temple, before the story closes on dawn over a slow river.
