Canan Mandev is the founder of NOIR and its scent curator. She reads perfume not only through note lists, but through skin, use, distance, season and the way a person carries it.

Mandev’s approach is not to declare one scent ‘correct’, but to narrow the options with the right questions. This is the basis of NOIR’s selection system: the 15-question Perfume Analysis, 2 ml trial sizes and Discovery Sets.

“To understand how a perfume can describe a person, you first need to understand how that person lives. I look at behaviour before notes: how close should it come, when should it be worn, how should it develop on skin.

That is why choosing at NOIR starts with questions, not with a catalogue.”