ONE OF A FEW NOSES IN THE WORLD, THE PERFUMER AND FOUNDER OF THE PERFUME LIBRARY, INDIA’S FIRST PERFUMERY TALKS ON
What is your first memory of smell?
A participative olfactive immersion
Perfumer Jahnvi Dameron Nandan invites you to join her with a response to this title. What do moonbeams smell like, and how can we photograph smell? These are just some of the questions she strives to answer as a world-leading perfumer. In what promises to be a moving sensory experience, Nandan will prize open the secretive and coveted world of perfume to reveal the extraordinary work involved, not just by the perfumers, but by your very own anatomy; the humble nose.
Jahnvi Lakhota Nandan is an Indo-French
perfumer and writer. She was born in India
in 1975, in a family of prominent politicians
and scientists. At the age of 17 she went to
study architecture at the School of Art and
Design, University of Tsukuba and later at
Sophia University where she pursued a PhD
in architecture. After writing her first book
Tokyo Style File and creating Japan's first
design show, she went to study expert
composition in perfumery at ISIPCA in
Versailles. It is here that she finally found
her creative voice and created India's first
contemporary perfumery, The Perfume
Library, and subsequently with the support
of the French government Atelier Mnemist,
a perfumery start-up in technology in Paris.
Her latest book the best-seller, Pukka
Indian, is a book on design that charts the
course of what makes design iconic.
Jahnvi imposes the invisible; striving to
create an understanding of fragrance as art.
Multiple inspirations have fuelled the imagination of Jahnvi centred on the long- standing ties between contemporary artists
such as Hema Upadhyaya and Iris Touliatou
and classical dance such as Bharatanatyam
of which she is a proponent as well as her
own unique double heritage of traditional
oil based perfumery in both India and Japan.
The works of art,photographs, archives,
books and diverse objects stemming from
the memories of smell are some of the
multiple inspirations that fuel the universe
and imagination of Jahnvi and helps give
fragrances character. In trying to revive the
perfumery traditions of India, she reveals a
new vision, both intimate and public that
result in the birth of unique fragrances
through associations that highlight the
cultural dimension of fragrances.