Jazmin Saraï

When Dana El Masri was studying at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery in France, she was required to create a fragrance for her final project. After being trained in a classic French method mostly by French perfumers, she ended up with a fragrance that was quintessentially ancient Egyptian. Since then, rejecting conventions has become one of her defining traits as a perfumer. “I want to express new narratives because ancient perfumery comes from Mesopotamia,” she explains. “There are so many things that have been colonized and repatriated without any understanding of the origins. It’s about sharing new stories or stories that actually exist but are hidden, stolen or forgotten.” The Montreal-based perfumer’s fragrance brand, Jazmin Saraï, embodies that very idea with an interdisciplinary, multi-sensory approach that combines music, art and culture. Raised in Dubai by an Egyptian mother and a Lebanese father, El Masri moved to Canada to pursue a singing career and study and was later drawn to perfumery. After creating fragrances for other companies, she turned her attention to her own label to create on her own terms. Her first collection, The Playlist, imagines what a song would smell like if it were in scent form. Other fragrances, like Fayoum, are an olfactive ode to the Middle East. “I wanted to swap the negative war-torn images of my countries,” she says. “There’s so much scent metaphor in the Arab world. It’s a huge part of our rituals, from how we express ourselves to the way we involve it in all of our social interactions.” She seeks to illuminate those rich cultural histories with her fragrances.