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Nisreen
Yes — I’d fix the prose itself rather than just make minor substitutions. The main issue is that a few sentences feel explanatory in a way that interrupts the emotional progression. This release marks two small changes. Co-authored is now part of Unscripted. Co-authored grew out of Unscripted to begin with, and the unscripted quality is inherently there, so keeping them separate stopped making sense. Every product page already names the vendor who holds the stock and the artisans behind it, which is most of what a separate category was carrying anyway. Releases now have names. I used to lean on a hierarchy — bases, themes, genres — as a conceptual guide, both for you browsing the site and for me making the products. I wrote about that in my taxonomy piece. The longer I sit with it, the more I feel that a single release name is enough. It’s looser, less structured, and easier to hold in your head. A release can draw from different bases or genres, curated or unscripted, and still come together under one name. The first release is Nisreen. The name was inspired first and foremost by a ten-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza whose account I’ve been following. Check out Nisreen’s page on Instagram. She posts about the challenges she faces, but mostly about how she gets through her days — how she, other children her age, and Palestinians across Gaza are surviving a genocide we watch unfold on our screens every day. And she does it with a smile. That’s what made her my inspiration: Palestinians can never be broken. This is my tribute to her. I’ve never met her or spoken with her, but that’s beside the point. If she ever comes across this site, I hope she finds some comfort in knowing that her presence, in however small a way, inspired something here. The meaning of the name felt fitting too. In Arabic, Nisreen (نسرين) refers to the wild rose. It felt right for the kind of products this website offers. This keeps your voice, but makes the transitions feel more natural and lets the Nisreen section carry more weight.
July The 15th
This time, my goal was to offer a much broader range of aromatic profiles—from roses and florals to animalics, fruits, citruses, and beyond—so there's something that speaks to a wider variety of noses. I've also done everything I could to keep prices as accessible as possible without compromising on the quality of the materials. For those who enjoyed my earlier work, Castore Rouge is probably the closest in spirit to my first releases. Nightfall is a balanced composition built around jasmine, neroli, leather, and fruit, with each element supporting the others without dominating. If you're drawn to greener compositions, Civet Prestige is for you. Creamy white florals, restrained animalics, and Hindi oud come together to create a rich yet elegant composition. Al Bahar explores a bright citrus opening over an oceanic, saline heart, resting on a subtle oudy foundation. And finally, Ananas Tabac is exactly what the name suggests: a juicy, sweet pineapple paired with a rich tobacco base, accented by restrained metallic nuances that add character without overwhelming the composition. I'm also excited to introduce artisan handmade wooden caps for the 30ml and 50ml bottles, each individually handcrafted and inlaid with natural mother of pearl. No two caps are exactly alike, making every bottle just a little more unique.
Mother Of Pearl
I’ve been refining the brand identity continuously, and the next evolution focuses on the caps—dark wood forms with a mother-of-pearl inlaid logo on top. What began as a search for better backdrops for product photography led me to Xena Kalouti, whose craftsmanship immediately resonated with me. I sent them bottles and caps to experiment with, and the results felt closely aligned with the minimalist direction I’ve been pursuing. We also explored a few emblem concepts, though they didn’t feel quite resolved yet. For now, the focus is on the caps, which will hopefully be part of the next drop. Please note that these will be available for the 30ml and 50ml bottle size caps at this time. 15ml cap sizes are not done yet--might be available in a future date.
The Perfumer’s Paradox
The last tobacco blend, Kasturi Cola — or as some affectionately called it, Cigar Cola — was quite a polarizing composition. Some fell in love with the entire arrangement. Others almost sang about individual notes they could pick out. A few found it too gourmand to wear. Such is the challenge of perfumery. I was discussing this recently with a customer. One of the difficulties I find — and perhaps other perfumers do as well — comes from working with materials in their raw form. Sometimes you lose the ability to experience them the way others do. Or perhaps more accurately, you stop meshing them together in quite the same way. After years of smelling the raw materials, you become intimately familiar with their individual character, while customers encounter the finished composition as a whole.
Art Not Fiction
For some reason, it’s widely accepted that consumers can demand suppliers be “neutral”—usually expressed as “stay out of politics.” I’ve outlined my view on this in Art with Bias, but recent conversations make me feel I should be more direct: I reject that fiction, especially at a time when official channels continue to suppress, ignore, or shut down voices that don’t align with power. Neutrality risks becoming complicity, particularly when it is demanded by those uncomfortable with hearing the voices of the oppressed. Art has never been neutral. Commerce has never been neutral. Media, design, and entertainment are all saturated with ideology, even when they claim otherwise. So no, I will not strip the politics from my reality. If that makes people uneasy, it should. Recently, a few members of my small but growing community told me that some people had left my brand because I am “political.” I expected it, but I am indifferent. In fact, through the lens of basic human dignity, I am glad. I am glad my blends are not used to adorn their world—a world where justice is rationed to the powerful, and privilege is disguised as entitlement. For me, this is not about comfort or convenience. It is about whether I am willing to bow to the pressure of profit, or to the expectations of those whose moral compass only functions within what is comfortable. I sometimes wonder if those who argue for separating “politics and business” realize that taking a stance is itself political, just as much as refusing to take one. Silence is a choice. Indifference is a choice. I made mine. Others can make theirs. Yes, I have had customers leave. I have had social media accounts banned. I was let go from a job for my stance against war-for-profit and colonization. That is a price—but it is small compared to what is actually at stake. The cost of silence is far greater. This is about refusing silence, and standing with a collective voice that is pushing against the erasure of Palestine. Palestine was not “nearly forgotten.” The struggle did not begin in October 2023. It began over 75 years ago and has continued since—with more loss, more violence, more dispossession, and more denial. It is not a recent story. I am open to discussion. We can talk history, theology, logic, and more. But if the expectation is my silence, then I have nothing further to say beyond this: you are welcome to explore the work of other perfumers. For those who celebrate the independence of their state, I ask only this: do you also acknowledge the resistance that made it possible? Do you teach your children about the sacrifices of previous generations? Would you not speak against the exploitation or colonization of your own history? I am not asking anyone to take a stance for Palestine. I am simply stating that I will not abandon mine. If I have a voice, a platform, and the ability to speak, then, God willing, I will use it. For me, Palestine is worth it. EDIT Nov 11 2025. I came across this short today, which I felt very much speaks to the same irony: Maher
How I got here
I was a kid who couldn’t stop creating — filling school books with drawings of TV cartoons, hearing a theme once and playing it perfectly on a keyboard, both hands, no training, just by ear. I sketched life-like portraits of my teachers in class and went home after hanging out with friends to recreate a meal I’d tasted at a tiny street food shop in Sharjah. I’ve always been driven by curiosity, trying to understand how sound, flavor, or form come together to create a complete experience. That curiosity carried me into architecture, where my graduation project focused on decoding urban patterns and expressing them as abstract designs. I spent months observing how people moved through space, learning how structure can quietly shape experience in powerful ways. Later, I pursued graduate studies in computational design and generative systems, where I learned how small changes can create wide variations, how complexity can be explored, organized, and refined, and how systems can be modeled from a user-interaction standpoint. Taking those conceptual frameworks, I worked in startups and engineering teams across construction, automotive, and aviation. I had the opportunity to build tools for both large and small teams, for production operations as well as experimentation. This taught me the value of iteration: build, test, refine, repeat. I bring that same process to perfumery, where every release is a step toward a clearer, more precise expression of an idea. That same mindset eventually drew me into perfumery. I started by buying artisanal blends and often felt the desire to add a few notes I thought they needed. That impulse to adjust and refine quickly became something deeper. I began studying raw materials, experimenting with structure, and realizing how even the smallest tweak could change the entire mood of a scent. I view creating perfume as a problem-solving activity. I start with a goal inspired by an idea and explore different ways to reach it — sometimes taking the most direct path, and other times experimenting freely, with a subtle influence of optimization and search algorithms guiding my choices. A blend might serve as an extensible base to be built upon or reinterpreted, or it might be a singular, self-contained composition designed to shift perception — taking the front row in one edition and the back row in another. I’ve tried to bring this modularity directly to the end user through X-editions on my website, creating a system of mass customization where each person can shape and explore their own experience. Each blend becomes a deliberate exploration within a framework — a balance of design, experimentation, and taste. Even this website, elkhaldi.studio, reflects that mindset. I continuously rebuild and refine it — not just for design, but to make it a better reflection of how I work and think. That’s my story. Maher
