NISHANE Istanbul is a fragrance brand that seeks to bottle Turkey’s ancient scent traditions along with Istanbul’s cosmopolitan style in a mix of the modern and the classical. Nishane was founded in 2012, which is probably why the company says it is Turkey’s very first niche brand. At that time, they put out colognes and scented candles, but they recently launched a 16-fragrance collection of extrait de parfums.
The Nishane Extrait Collection. Photo via Nishane’s Facebook page.
I’ve tried six of them: Duftbluten, Spice Bazaar, Patchuli Khoza, Tuberoza, Munegu, and Afrika Olifant. Unfortunately, none of the six worked for me and none of them had sufficient complexity to warrant spending several thousand words analysing each one individually. Perfume reviewing is a subjective thing that is dependent on individual tastes, experiences, and skin chemistry, but it’s not easy to write exhaustive, detailed reviews on things one dislikes all in a row. So I’ve chosen to write what essentially amounts to blurbs by my (admittedly skewed) standards rather than skipping reviewing the fragrances entirely. In each case, I’ll eschew quoting Nishane’s full description for the scent and all the background information. Instead, I’ll simply give the company’s general categorization, the notes, and a link to either Fragrantica, Basenotes, or a positive review where you can read different perspectives as a counterbalance.