Nishane Hundred Silent Ways Extrait de Parfum

Hundred Silent Ways is Nishane's tribute act, and the house says so openly. It describes the fragrance as created as a tribute to the most-liked perfumes in the history of perfumery, with a modern interpretation and a blend of pleasant notes. That is an unusually candid statement of intent from a niche brand, most of which would rather claim they invented something. What Nishane actually did was take the creamy white-floral-and-vanilla architecture that has sold well for forty years and rebuild it at extrait strength.

Nishane classes it as floral, gourmand and musky. The published pyramid opens on tuberose, mandarin and peach; the heart is white jasmine, gardenia and orris; the base is vanilla, sandalwood and vetiver. In practice the peach and mandarin last barely ten minutes before the white florals take over completely. Tuberose and gardenia together produce that thick, milky, almost edible floral texture people describe as creamy, and orris adds a powdery, cool, root-like quality underneath that keeps it from going sugary. The vanilla is soft rather than dessert-sweet, and the vetiver in the base is the one grown-up touch, a dry earthy line that stops the whole thing drifting into body-spray territory.

The composition is commonly attributed to Jorge Lee. Nishane does not name a perfumer on its own product page.

Nishane is the work of two Istanbul founders, Mert Güzel and Murat Katran, who set the house up in 2012, and this is one of the releases that carried it well beyond Turkey. It skews feminine in wear despite being sold as unisex, and it is a cold-weather, after-dark fragrance. Big florals and heat do not mix well, and a Highveld summer afternoon will amplify it well beyond what most people want in the room. A winter evening is where it belongs.

Performance is the main selling point and it delivers. Extrait concentration gives ten hours or more, with projection that fills a room through the first two or three. This is a fragrance you apply in two sprays and then leave alone. The corollary is that it is very easy to overdo, and in a confined space such as a car or a lift it becomes genuinely overwhelming. If you like the style, it is one of the strongest performers in its category. If you do not, no amount of quality in the materials is going to win you over.