The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Shisha arrived in 2017, a composition from Amado that sits firmly on the indulgent side of the conversation. Christian Provenzano is the credited nose, and the brief reads like an invitation to a private lounge: hookah smoke, sweet tobacco, something fruity being poured alongside. The opening is candied and sharp, raspberry and almond catching light alongside a thread of licorice that pulls like anise through cold tea. Almost cordial-like. Around the middle, Turkish rose and roasted coffee take over, warming the composition and giving it chew. There's a deliberate softness to how the materials are layered here, nothing shouting, everything rounding into the next. Shisha isn't a place or a person. It's the atmosphere around both.
The structural choice here is what makes Shisha worth attention. Opening with almond and raspberry alongside licorice is gourmand territory, but routing the heart through Turkish rose and coffee rather than the more typical vanilla-pastry route pulls the composition sideways. The rose does the heavy lifting of keeping it from collapsing into pure sweetness, while the coffee introduces that roasted, slightly bitter edge that gives the drydown its weight. The transition from heart to base moves through smoke rather than sugar, a slow materialization of tobacco that settles into fabric.
The evolution
The opening belongs to fruit. Almond and raspberry arrive with a candied brightness, the licorice threading through like anise in cold tea. Sweet, sharp, almost cordial-like. As the composition warms, the coffee and rose take the wheel, the fruit receding and what replaces it carrying more chew and depth. This is where Shisha earns its name. The tobacco doesn't appear so much as it materializes, gradual and inevitable, like smoke settling into fabric. The tonka and vanilla absorb everything else, building toward a drydown that is warm, ambery, with a faint leather dry edge keeping things from going soft. Later, what's left on skin reads as a soft, sweet, tobacco-tonka murmur, a trace of vanilla and leather still clinging to the wrist. It doesn't project loudly by then. It doesn't need to.
Cultural impact
Shisha reads as an evening composition, built for atmosphere rather than announcement. The fruit-and-licorice opening gives it a candied brightness that sets it apart from the heavier, oud-driven work more commonly associated with Arabian perfumery, while the rose and coffee heart keeps the sweetness from tipping into pure dessert territory. Within the broader gourmand conversation, the tobacco-vanilla pairing has become familiar shorthand for after-dark comfort, and Shisha's spin leans into fruit and licorice to keep the formula feeling distinct.
