SAMBAC SEDUCTION PAPIER D'ENCENS

“Jasmine has followed me through most of my life. Growing up in a Tamil household, it was everywhere. Threaded into hair, gathered into garlands, offered during prayer. It belonged as much to the everyday as it did to celebration, and I don't think I appreciated just how extraordinary its fragrance was until much later.

Some of my fondest memories are of my grandfather gathering jasmine from his garden and my grandmother patiently threading the flowers for my hair. I remember the heady fragrance lingering long after the flowers had begun to wilt. More recently, after the birth of my son, my father burned benzoin resin to perfume my hair. A familiar scent, suddenly attached to an entirely new memory.

With Sambac Seduction, I wanted to capture something of those associations without making a fragrance that felt purely nostalgic. We use jasmine absolute sourced from Madurai, a place with its own remarkable floral heritage. Its intoxicating, almost narcotic character meets the luminous, resinous quality of frankincense and the soft, balsamic warmth of benzoin.

What fascinates me about jasmine is its duality. A flower associated with devotion and innocence, yet one of the most unapologetically sensual materials in perfumery. The same flowers worn to a temple can feel quite different after dark. I rather like that a fragrance doesn't have to choose between the sacred and the seductive.

Sambac Seduction is part of Holy Smokes, our collection of handmade incense papers introduced for Deepavali. I wanted to take fragrances so deeply embedded in my memories and give them a place in the everyday rituals we create for ourselves now.

Not every ritual needs to be meaningful or transformative. Sometimes I light incense because I want the house to smell beautiful, because the day has been long, or because I have five minutes to myself.

And sometimes, pleasure is reason enough.”

Dr Prasanthi Purusothaman
Founder, L’ORIENT