Nishane

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History of the house

Nishane was founded in 2012 in Istanbul (Türkiye) by Mert Güzel and Murat Katran. The two had met two years earlier, in 2010, and bonded over a shared fascination with niche perfumery at a time when the category was still largely a Western European affair. Their ambition was explicit from the start: to place Istanbul on the global fragrance map and to build the first niche perfume house rooted in Turkey.

The brand name carries the project: in Turkish, nişane means a mark, sign or symbol, and the house has consistently used the meeting point between Europe and Asia as its founding idea. Rather than imitating French or Italian niche codes, the founders chose to mine Anatolian history, Ottoman culture and Turkish folklore for material, then translate it into a contemporary luxury register.

From the outset, Nishane positioned itself in extrait de parfum concentration and worked with established external perfumers rather than a single in-house nose. Wulóng Chá appeared in 2015, Fan Your Flames in 2016, then in 2017 Hacivat and Karagöz, named after the two characters of traditional Turkish shadow theater that give the house’s Shadow Play Collection its name. Hacivat, described by the house as citrus, chypre and woody and built on pineapple and patchouli, became the breakout success that carried the house internationally. The 2017 press release credits the Shadow Play trilogy, Hacivat, Karagöz and Zenne, to the two founders as “co-noses” with perfumer Jorge Lee.

Ani, composed by Cécile Zarokian and released in 2019, broadened the audience further with a spicy, woody vanilla signature. Over the following years the house expanded its distribution through selective niche retailers across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America, and reissued several of its best known perfumes in reworked X versions. Creative control has stayed with the two founders; in 2025, the growth fund Atlas Büyüme Sermayesi, managed by Maxis Girişim, and the Dutch investor Mada took a stake in the house.

Boutiques and points of sale

As of 4 November 2026, the house Boutiques page lists thirteen addresses under the Nishane name. The Istanbul (Türkiye) boutique is at 51/A Ahmet Fetgari Street, in the Nişantaşı district. In Europe, Nishane has boutiques in Paris (France), at 266 rue Saint-Honoré, in London (United Kingdom), at 56 Maddox Street, and in Rome (Italy), on Via Vittoria. It is also present in Mykonos (Greece), at the Cavo Tagoo hotel, and in Escaldes-Engordany (Andorra), at the Júlia centre. Outside Europe, it has boutiques in New York (United States), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Makati (Philippines), Jeddah and Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Beirut (Lebanon) and Doha (Qatar), inside Printemps. A boutique at Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) is announced. For other authorised points of sale, the house refers customers to its client service.

The collections

Nishane builds its catalog as a set of named collections, each carrying its own story rather than a single olfactory family. That narrative architecture is what sets the house apart: a perfume here is never just a formula, but a chapter in a wider story rooted in Istanbul and Anatolia. The ranges below form the current backbone of the repertoire.

The X Collection

Created for the house’s tenth anniversary, The X Collection has become Nishane’s main showcase and now gathers six perfumes. Its logic is one of revisiting: it reinterprets the house’s historic signatures, including Hacivat. Hacivat sits at its center because it remains the citrus woody chypre that carried the house internationally, built on a pineapple and patchouli accord that became an instantly recognisable signature. For many readers this collection is the gateway into Nishane, the place where the house distils its identity into a tighter selection.

Time Capsule Collection

Unveiled at Esxence in 2022, the Time Capsule Collection holds five perfumes and serves a distinct purpose: it opens the house to major international noses such as Dominique Ropion, Anne Flipo and Carlos Benaïm. Its theme is the passing of time, carried even into names coined in Esperanto, a universal language chosen for its timelessness: Papilefiko evokes the butterfly effect, Tempfluo the flow of time, Tero earth and Kredo belief. The collection signals Nishane’s ambition to stand on equal footing with the great signatures of the craft.

Prestige Collection

The Prestige Collection brings together some of the house’s most elevated compositions on a deliberately precious register. It extends Nishane’s taste for opulent, densely worked extrait de parfum, where raw material takes precedence over lightness. Built around perfumes such as Mana, Shem and Nefs, it embodies the most sumptuous side of the catalog and speaks to an audience that looks for depth and lasting power above all.

Rumi, Shadow Play and No Boundaries

Several founding collections still anchor the catalog in its cultural roots. The Rumi Collection draws on the poet and mystic Mevlânâ Rûmî, translating Sufi contemplation into olfactory material: Fan Your Flames, a woody gourmand built on tobacco and coconut, is its most cited piece. The Shadow Play Collection takes its name from Turkish shadow theater and its two characters, Hacivat and Karagöz, whose eponymous perfumes set a luminous citrus chypre against a darker, fruity green woody. Launched in 2017 as a trilogy, it includes a third perfume, Zenne, and the house product pages call it the Shadow Play Trilogy. The No Boundaries Collection embodies the cosmopolitan openness the house claims for itself, faithful to the idea of Istanbul as a bridge between continents. Ani belongs to it. Around these stories sit more specific ranges: Imaginative, Abundance, Blossom, Miniature Art, Extrait de Cologne and Meant to Be Seen. The Imaginative Collection draws on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. As of 4 November 2026, the house Collections page shows fifteen, adding the Signature Collection, the Experimental Collection and Favonius.

Notable perfumes

The Nishane catalog is organized in several collections, largely in extrait de parfum concentration. The references below are the most frequently cited anchors of the house. Product pages name no perfumer. Two credits are first-hand: the 2017 press release names the founders with Jorge Lee for the Shadow Play trilogy, and Cécile Zarokian lists Ani among her projects. Later X versions that revisit these signatures are not listed separately.

Olfactory signature

Nishane has no single olfactory formula, but the catalog is recognisable through a consistent set of choices. The house works almost entirely in extrait de parfum, favours generous, long-lasting compositions and is unafraid of sweetness, smoke and resin. Many of its best known perfumes sit in the woody, gourmand and amber families, with a contemporary, projecting character aimed at an international niche audience.

The second recognisable axis is cultural. The founders repeatedly draw on Turkish and Anatolian references, from the Hacivat and Karagöz shadow theater characters to the ancient city of Ani and the Aegean coast. These references are used as creative briefs rather than decorative names, giving the catalog a narrative coherence that distinguishes Nishane from houses built purely on raw-material storytelling.

Because composition is entrusted to several perfumers, the house signature is carried less by a single hand than by a curatorial point of view. Cécile Zarokian and Jorge Lee are the most associated with the pillars, Dominique Ropion, Anne Flipo and Carlos Benaïm with the Time Capsule Collection, and the consistency comes from the founders’ direction: density, generosity and a clear sense of place.

A house that turned Istanbul, the bridge between two continents, into a perfumery language of its own.

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