Nicolas Jennings
Nicholas Jennings traded the green hedgerows of Warwickshire for the sunbaked limestone causses of Languedoc-Roussillon, a swap that quietly defined his path into natural perfumery. Before the bottles bore his name, he spent close to twenty years practicing a craft rooted in patience: formulating traditional incense and incense paper from raw botanical materials, honoring techniques that reach back to the nineteenth century. That slow apprenticeship, built on benzoin, peru balsam, and kindred resins, gave him a tactile understanding of how naturals behave over hours and across seasons. He eventually settled in Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, one of the most photographed medieval villages in the south of France, and founded Sharini Parfums Naturels. The house operates at a deliberately small scale, producing perfumes in limited batches from organic, naturally derived ingredients. Jennings treats each release as a continuation of the same devotion that first drew him to incense: a refusal to rush what the raw materials need to say.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Nicolas composes
A Jennings composition tends to feel grounded and resinous, carrying the warmth of materials he has worked with for decades: benzoin, peru balsam, and the wider family of balsamic fixatives that anchor his incense practice. His palette leans toward the historic, drawing on nineteenth-century traditions of natural perfumery rather than the bright, molecular vocabulary of contemporary houses. Expect depth over sparkle, with base notes given room to unfold rather than buried under a loud top. Production stays deliberately small, a discipline that lets him source organically and monitor every step. The result is perfumery that reads as hand-built, rooted in place, and uninterested in trends.
Philosophy
What drives Nicolas
Jennings builds his fragrances the way old builders raise stone walls: one carefully chosen piece at a time, with respect for what the material already wants to become. He works almost exclusively with organic and naturally derived ingredients, a choice that shapes every decision downstream, from sourcing to maceration. He is openly skeptical of the synthetic shortcuts that dominate mainstream perfumery, and he believes that commercial restrictions on certain natural raw materials have narrowed what modern scent can do. His answer is small-batch production, where quality control stays in his own hands and each formula can be coaxed rather than coerced. Patience is the recurring theme. Twenty years of incense work taught him that aromatic materials reveal themselves slowly, and he allows them that time.
The houses