Jahnvi Dameron Nandan, Perfumer

With her venture, The Perfume Library, Jahnvi Dameron Nandan set out to do something that one usually reads about in magical realism novels: capture emotions and memories through the careful curation of fragrances. As its website notes: ‘Each of The Perfume Library’s fragrances are poetry, eccentricity and science all combined. They are the stories of cities, towns, countries, clothes and long lost loved ones.’ To get a perfume correct can sometimes require up to 200 ingredients and Nandan has admitted to having smelt over 1,000 scents before she arrived at what’s available at her Khan Market store in Delhi. Scents at The Perfume Library, a ‘theatre of olfactive memories’, include notes that range from traditional smells such as rose, jasmine and musk to unusual ones like tea, tobacco, tonka beans and sage. She studied her art in a perfume school in Versailles and is based in Paris, but much of her work is rooted in the fragrances that make up Indian memories.

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