"There is one particularly perilous exercise in perfumery: composing a white floral fragrance that avoids both the syrupy heaviness of the 1980s and the insipid transparency of certain modern aquatic fragrances. Enes Dogan takes up this challenge with Le Toucher, and does so with the quiet confidence of an architect who knows his way around proportions. From the opening notes, the intention is clear: gardenia appears quickly, but in a surprisingly understated version. It is a gardenia drawn in charcoal rather than watercolour. Jasmine plays a counterpoint, providing just enough indole to anchor the composition in reality, far from the synthetic reconstructions that populate the shelves.

What is striking is the cleanliness of the execution. At 15-20% concentration, Le Toucher could have tipped over into excess, that olfactory saturation that transforms so many ‘niche creations’ into perfumed screams. This is not the case. The composition breathes, the notes unfold with a natural ease that testifies to a genuine focus on the raw materials.

If we had to find a lineage, we would think of certain creations from Jean-Claude Ellena's heyday at Hermès: the same quest for simplicity, the same rejection of the superfluous, the same conviction that less can be infinitely more. Where others overload, Dogan subtracts. Where others saturate, he suggests. "