Sumatran Ghaliya began not with a formula, but with a feeling, the same feeling you get when standing in front of a Jackson Pollock painting. At first, it looks wild. Lines and splatters racing across the canvas, colours crashing together. But the longer you look, the more it reveals: patterns, balance, intention, and a mind deeply committed to its craft.
That became the blueprint.
Instead of paint, we used scent. Instead of canvas, we used oud, wild, aged, and richly textured. Upon it, we layered ingredients from across the world, each one chosen not only for its rarity, but for the story of the people behind it.
In Japan, a farmer tending to sudachi and kabosu orchards in early morning light. In India, distillers gathering juhi petals before dawn to preserve their sweetness. In Ethiopia, a family continuing an age-old civet tradition with respect and precision. On the shores of New Zealand, ambergris discovered after years adrift at sea. In Tasmania, boronia flowers harvested during their fleeting season, and in our own garden, hyacinth flowers, hand-picked one by one, their scent captured through the slow ritual of enfleurage.
Every ingredient is a brushstroke. Every brushstroke a life’s work.
My role was simply to listen, to understand each oil’s character, its texture, its story. and then let them speak together in harmony.
Sumatran Ghaliya is the meeting point of all these hands, all these lands, all these small acts of devotion. It is a fragrance built through patience, passion, and an obsession with extracting beauty from the natural world. It represents the interconnectedness of people who may never meet, yet contribute to the same creation.
This is not a perfume built by machines or algorithms. It is a perfume built by people. People with calloused palms, seasoned instincts, and generations of knowledge.
Sumatran Ghaliya is their story, woven through mine, and now, through yours.
