Heritage
A house, in its own words
Habibi NY traces its origins to 2016, when Shakir Ahmed and Tabassum Khan, a married couple, left their previous careers to build a fragrance brand from scratch. The name Habibi, an Arabic term of endearment meaning my beloved, reflects the couple's founding intention to center their work around love, connection, and emotional resonance. Early in their journey, the brand gained distribution through Bloomingdales, a notable retail milestone for an independent American fragrance house seeking broader visibility. The brand operated initially as a direct-to-consumer business through its website before expanding into department store presence. Over the subsequent years, the portfolio expanded with seasonal and limited-edition releases, each carrying names that reference places, materials, and emotional states. The founders have spoken publicly about their goal of creating scents that are distinctive and fairly priced, a positioning that sets them apart from heritage European houses and positions them within the growing niche fragrance category in the United States. Their journey has been covered by outlets including Grit Daily and Scent Xplore, and the brand maintains an active presence on Instagram where it shares its origin story alongside new launches. As of 2024, the house had released at least a dozen named fragrances across multiple years of activity.
Habibi NY operates from an avowedly emotional premise. The founders have stated that their mission centers on inspiring love, unity, and diversity through fragrance, and that their work aims to evoke memories and forge genuine connections for wearers. This framing treats scent as a medium of personal narrative rather than merely a luxury good. The brand explicitly names authenticity as a guiding value, suggesting an intention to resist the formulaic conventions of mainstream perfumery in favor of more personal creative territory. The founders have described wanting to build something premium, unique, and accessible in terms of pricing, a balancing act that reflects the evolving expectations of niche fragrance consumers in the post-2020 market. The emotional language pervading the brand's self-description, while consistent across their own communications, aligns with a broader cultural shift in the fragrance industry toward scent as self-expression and emotional wellness rather than status signaling. Habibi NY's approach differs from houses anchored by a single signature perfumer; instead, the creative direction appears to come from the founders themselves, giving the brand an intimate, personal quality that its marketing amplifies.