Let me start with what add-ons are not. They are not there because a blend is incomplete. Far from it. I only release blends that feel ready. In fact, it hurts, both emotionally and for the cost and materials lost, to remember the blends I scrapped because the quality or goal wasn't hit.
I always recommend trying the original blend first, before going the add-on route.
So why offer them? Some blends come across so robust that they can be taken in a few further directions. Those directions have implications on cost, and I wanted to give you the option rather than enforce it on you and raise the price. If you're looking for something semi-bespoke, add-ons are how you get there.
They are also not random. Each add-on is offered based on a careful selection of materials, chosen because I believe they work with the blend at hand.
My approach has also evolved. With Bateekh, I changed my strategy and offered four ready-made options based on a hunch about what customers would go with. This lets me acquire materials in larger amounts, which brings the cost down for everyone. So going forward, you can expect some preset choices, and others available as add-ons if you choose to go that way.
It is also a productization question. Too many options can be confusing, and none can be constraining. With artisanal blends, I'm trying to do two things at once: create a memorable formulation, and build a platform that allows for extensions. (Sorry, systems engineer speak.)
So it is always a question of balancing options at an additional cost per gram against predicted, ready-made ones. I'd rather keep that balance honest and let you decide where you want to land.
The idea for a community-driven blend was inspired by collaborative software development, where developers contribute to a shared codebase to build a product together. I wanted to bring that model to perfumery.
Some time ago, I floated the concept on Facebook to plant the seed, but it didn’t get the traction I was hoping for. In hindsight, the issue went deeper than a lack of structure. The problem was with the workflow, and the model itself wasn’t fully conceived. Too many people were contributing competing ideas, with no clear way to converge on a cohesive blend.
More importantly, I hadn’t made the distinction clear between contributing to the original project (or to a completely new one) and branching off from an existing blend to develop it in its own direction. I stepped away from the idea for a while. Later, it hit me: branch off from an existing blend, develop something new, and let it stand in its own right.
Think of how a Linux distribution builds on an upstream foundation while developing its own identity, priorities, and community. Every distro has a steward: a body or entity that plays the role of maintainer, defines its vision, and steers its direction toward a clear goal. For me, that maintainer is typically an influencer, a single voice who steers the direction, and the Tailored release is their own distro, in both senses: built on an upstream, and distributed by them.
Unscripted is the upstream. It has its own DNA, and anything built downstream has to align with the conventions and framework that define it. In a way, Tailored is a semi-bespoke distro, at scale.
Guidelines
Every Tailored release follows the same ground rules:
It starts from an Unscripted blend. The upstream might be released or still in development, and the Tailored version builds on its underlying DNA.
It is a new composition. Unscripted blends aren’t documented for exact remakes. A Tailored version is never a plain copy. I shift the emphasis while retaining the original’s character.
One maintainer leads. Each release is guided by a single voice, typically an influencer, who has earned their community’s trust.
The maintainer owns distribution. They take responsibility for offering the blend to their community and distributing it within it. That is the second meaning of “distro.”
It is exclusive. A Tailored release is available only through the maintainer who commissioned it. As such, it will not be sold through Elkhaldi Studio.
It is one batch. Once it sells out, it will not be remade.
It needs to be viable. Each Tailored blend needs a minimum batch size and a target price point that work for both the community and the production run. Because a batch is made once, it works best when the community is already in place. The feasible batch size will also depend on how much of the selected base I have available.
How to get Tailored
Tailored is for someone who leads or curates a community of fragrance lovers and has earned that community’s trust, typically an influencer. The maintainer brings the vision and the community. I bring the perfumery.
Get in touch. Tell me about your community: who they are, what they love, how you reach them, and why they trust you.
Choose a base. Pick an Unscripted blend, released or in development, that you connect with.
Share your direction. Tell me what you want to bring out of it: fresher, darker, woodier, and so on.
Agree the terms. We settle the batch size and target price point so the release works for your community.
Develop and review. I rework the blend, you test it, and we refine it until it fits your vision, within an agreed number of iterations.
Release. The finished blend is produced as a single batch and distributed exclusively through you.
If you lead a community and want to commission a Tailored release, get in touch.
Do all materials need to be expensive?
It's a loaded question, and the honest answer is: it depends.
Material cost is driven by many things: rarity, how hard it is to source (sometimes that means negotiating with and convincing an owner to let it go), production volume, age, scent profile, shipping, and rising costs across much of the supply chain.
Whether a material is worth using in a blend is a different question, and I think it's best answered from the consumer's side. As a perfumer making work for people, I ask myself: will someone actually appreciate this material, whether for its rarity, its cost, or its scent? Not every material will interest every customer, and rightly so.
I'll admit that, as a perfumer who aspires to work with rare materials, getting my hands on something hard to find thrills me, as I imagine it does every perfumer. But the litmus test is this: does the material add something to the blend beyond romance and nostalgia?
In my experience, some materials do, and some blends genuinely benefit from them.
Qinan Rose and Soul of My Soul would not be what they are without high-grade Hainan oud (Qinan Rose) and Two Souls, a vintage Papua rose (in both sprays).
With Chinese ouds in particular, many lean generic to my nose. It takes a great deal of sampling and testing to find one that is truly unique and worth offering. You might try 20 oils to find one you love. Other ouds have better odds, more hits than misses, but not Chinese.
Patchouli is similar. I've smelled nondescript patchouli oils, and others that could honestly be considered perfumes in their own right. I may offer one as a soliflore in the future.
The effect of a great material isn't always a sharp spike in one note. Often it's an overall upgrade to every aspect of the blend.
Take Musk Melange, the blend so many of you loved. At the time I offered it at half my own cost, because I wanted people to try my work. Had I priced it at its actual cost plus a margin, I'm not sure it would have been noticed the way it was. That blend contains many musk tinctures that are around a decade old. You can rarely achieve something like it without those materials. You might come close, and the effect of age can be simulated or reverse-engineered (as in the upcoming Misk Ateeq), but it can't truly be replicated.
Beyond the age of the material itself, there's the curation and preparation: tincturing, filtering, treating, and rebalancing to accentuate one note over others. That takes time and effort, and often means losing material along the way. In any other industry, we'd call that R&D.
Oud Session and Ambergris Spectrum, among others, took a great deal of work to prepare. I often work on a blend for many months, sometimes closer to a year, before it reaches the online store. It isn't only the materials or the process; it's also the time the materials need to age.
So the answer is: some blends can be made with lower-cost materials, and others simply can't.
A great deal goes into making a blend, and then comes the final step: pricing it. My approach is to consult a small circle of select customers, perfumers, and vendors before anything reaches the store. They know the market, and they buy and collect themselves. Think of them as my own board of directors.
After all, I could put gold leaf in a bottle, but it wouldn't add anything noticeable to the scent beyond an attractive look (unless it triggered some unexpected chemical interaction, which isn't something I care to explore in my work right now). In the end, the question comes down to the consumer: would that be worth a higher price tag?
I always aim to price blends in line with their current market value. My rule is that nothing should be overpriced. I look for the sweet spot: high enough to cover costs and fund future blends, but low enough that things actually move.
Pricing is the other end of choosing materials, and neither happens in a vacuum. Making perfume is about far more than clicking "buy" on one oil or another based on price.
So far, I've mostly relied on my own judgement, as the maker, to decide how best to present a scent. But many of you have asked for lighter versions: lighter on clothes, lighter in presence, and lighter on the wallet. After all, a blend is made to be worn — by you!
I've always tried to give you a choice, so each blend can become your own. That started as X Editions, where "X" was whatever you wanted to add to a blend, and over a few releases it became the more focused set of Add-ons I offer today.
Some blends want to stay dense, and some want to stay light. So I'll be revisiting some of my current blends to make lighter versions of them that, to my nose, are still concentrated enough to give each blend what it deserves.
To drive the point home on concentration, let me clarify a few things.
You experience a perfume when its scent molecules physically reach the receptors in your nose, either because you sniff your skin up close or because the molecules have drifted into the air around you. That drifting is what we call projection.
But reaching your nose isn't enough. You only notice the molecules your receptors can detect. Think of it like Lego: a molecule has to click into a receptor that fits it. Each receptor fits a range of shapes, and each molecule fits several receptors, so every scent is a pattern of pieces clicking into place. Not everyone has the same pieces. Some people can't smell certain molecules at all, and certain musks are a well-known example. That's one reason the same blend can smell different to you than to someone else.
What the scent sits in matters too. In a spray, the scent is dissolved in alcohol. Alcohol evaporates within minutes, so a spray opens fast and fills the air right away. Once the alcohol is gone, the scent molecules keep leaving your skin on their own, each at its own pace: the lightest first, the heaviest last.
In an attar, the scent sits in oil. Oil barely evaporates, so it holds the molecules back and lets them go slowly. That's why attars sit closer to the skin, project less, and can last a long time.
Warmth speeds up both. A blend behaves differently on a hot day, and on your wrist compared with your shirt.
Which brings me to a trade-off. A molecule is either on your skin or clothing, or in the air. There's no Schrödinger's cat business in perfumery; it can't be in both places at once. For the same amount of perfume, the faster it leaves, the more you smell it now and the less is left for later. Slower release means softer projection that lasts longer.
It's a trade-off, not a strict rule. Wearing more, or wearing a stronger blend, can give you more of both.
Then there's concentration itself. Think of scent molecules as people in a room. A crowded room is loud, noticeable, and slow to empty. A room with fewer people is quieter, airier, and empties sooner.
But the people aren't all alike. Some leave almost as soon as they arrive; others stay until the end. With natural materials, who is in the room matters more than how many. The same material can behave differently depending on how it was processed or how long it has aged. That's why a number on a label tells you so little, and why I judge a lighter version by nose, not by percentage.
A lighter version is softer, less dense, and fades sooner. It also has an upside: some materials show different sides of themselves when they have more room. A lighter version isn't just a weaker copy. It can reveal facets that the denser one hides.
Where you wear a scent matters too. Your skin has its own chemistry: its natural oils, moisture, warmth and pH all interact with the blend. Drier skin often lets a scent fade faster, while oilier or well-moisturised skin tends to hold it longer. Even the condition of your skin on a given day plays a part. That's why the same blend can wear differently on you than on someone else, and even on you from one day to the next.
If you want a more even, predictable experience, try your clothes. Fabric has no chemistry of its own to change the scent and no body heat pushing it off, so a blend tends to smell closer to how I made it, and it often lasts longer too.
That's another reason I'm making lighter versions of the current drop. Many of you wanted to spray them on light-colored shirts, and the denser versions, rich in dark natural materials, can mark pale fabric. The lighter versions are much gentler on clothes, but natural materials can still leave a trace, so test on a hidden spot first.
When someone asks me what the concentration is, my answer is usually "enough." Now there's simply a "lighter enough."
Hi
Do you deliver in Australia.
Also please let me know if you what is your recommendation for a 45 year guy who love rose but not upfront – more like in background mysteriously picking ( but identifiable ). :) look s like very difficult explaination. Anyways, this is a first start so do let me know what can i try — I am like challenging artisanal fragrances but my social life demands not to go for drastic fragrance like barnyardy ouds or too floral.. Fragrance should hit pleasantly atleast 50% of the people.
Where:Everywhere, Personal / home , Social / outings , Work / public , Small groups / personal space, Active / indoor
When:Morning
Frequency?:Occasionally
How accurate was the description in your experience?:
Very different
Spot on
Watermelon masterclass
When i first heard that Maher was releasing a Watermelon fragrance i thought 2 things;
(1) what a amazing idea for a Palestinian Perfumer to release something to support those who are being oppressed
(2) i was worried as perfumes that have a watermelon accord usually either smell too sweet or overly synthetic.
But as per usual i put my trust in Mahers craft and boy was i surprised. The opening is a photorealistic juicy watermelon, not just the meat of the watermelon but the skin and seeds too. It smells vibrant and refreshing and not synthetic at all. Soon after a feint dry tobacco starts to appear adding another layer to this work of art and making sure it doesn’t become to linear. The melody of Ouds most noticeably the Green, crisp, silky Malinau and the slightly sweet honeyed, melon like Hainan create a base that adds so much character and smoothness to this composition. Bateekh is not too airy or dense, not too sweet and fruity or too resinous. But it is a completely unique work of art that proves Maher keeps getting better with every blend.
Where:Work / public , Everywhere, Personal / home , Social / outings
When:Anytime
Frequency?:Weekly
How accurate was the description in your experience?:
Very different
Spot on
A wonderful new Signature Scent.
I now own five Elkhaldi perfumes and this is going to be a favourite. It is very intense and complex and I love that about the Ouds that I have bought from this House. I’ve already worn Castore Rouge half a dozen times since I unwrapped it, and each time I’ve worn it in public spaces, I've had compliments from other people about it. I feel a $million when I wear it. Also, it projects amazingly so it carries everywhere I go. It's great.
How accurate was the description in your experience?:
Very different
Spot on
Watermelon accord perfection
First off, I purchased the Bateekh with Malinau purely off convos with Maher. I have always loved the Malinau profile and never even thought of watermelon as a successful accord but I trust Maher’s nose entirely. On first spray I was blown away by the accuracy of this watermelon accord! Sweet but not cloying, fresh and juicy. Then the dry-down blew me away because it slowly worked its way down to the Malinau profile like a perfect match I had never imagined. Next thing you know the watermelon had morphed into beautiful Malinau woods that lasted on skin the whole day and on clothes for days!
1 comment
Hi
Do you deliver in Australia.
Also please let me know if you what is your recommendation for a 45 year guy who love rose but not upfront – more like in background mysteriously picking ( but identifiable ). :) look s like very difficult explaination. Anyways, this is a first start so do let me know what can i try — I am like challenging artisanal fragrances but my social life demands not to go for drastic fragrance like barnyardy ouds or too floral.. Fragrance should hit pleasantly atleast 50% of the people.
Look forward to hear from you soon