The perfume “Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” by SASVA is an unusual candidate for my collection. The perfume is clearly unisex, if not slightly more masculine, and it contains a lot of cardamom. The brand is from India and celebrates the various regional cultures through the fragrances.
“Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” has no sweetness at all. Intense scents of herbs and flowers in a barren, dry summer landscape is what I smell. As if a golden light touches a desert of stones. This is more poetic than my usual descriptions of a perfume, but somehow “Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” transports seriousness, silence, and solitude. It mirrors the rocky terrain of the Indian part of the Himalaya in Ladakh, or so the marketing text coming with the perfume lets us know. Even without having ever been in India or the Himalaya, one can clearly imagine the barren land with, few people, big distances, and cold temperatures at night even in summer. The area is also known as little Tibet – houses and Buddhist temples nestled against the rock, bright colours against a monotony of grey stone, endless lands, dry air, and a clear blue sky.
“Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” is a perfume that calms the wearer down and creates distance to the normal annoyances of our daily lives. I tend to wear it to meetings on difficult days, when I already know there is no easy way out of a situation. The perfume is addressed not only to the wearer, but also the other party. “Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” signals the situation is serious, it is not the time for lame jokes and glossing over the problem. The perfume supports sticking to the difficult route, being clear, precise, and cold.
According to the SASVA website the scent notes are orange bitters, saffron, cardamom, ginger, patchouli, dry amber, cedarwood, vetiver, leather, and musk.
Saffron, ginger, dried orange peel, and the underlying mixture of patchouli, cedarwood and vetiver is what comes through most. I smell anis as well.
The perfume changes on cloths and skin much more than sprayed on a tissue. Freshly applied on the skin it has an almost forbidding presence, like an anti-gourmand, but it gets warmer and less spicy with time. It never looses its distance, but adopts more to the wearer. On a tissue the harsher notes get even more pronounced after a day, whilst the smell is gone on skin or cloths. This is unusual, as far as I know about perfumes.
The colour of “Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” is a bright yellow, like dried achillea (yarrow) flowers.
All SASVA perfumes come in packaging painted in wonderfully detailed images. I tend to keep those with my favourite animals and give others away. Till now everybody was happy about an empty SASVA box; small children even crave them. “Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” is symbolized through snow leopards. SASVA use also tigers, monkeys, snakes, peacocks, swans, and other avatars to symbolize the perfume. As the packaging is so wonderfully intertwined with some of the scent notes in the perfume, I included it in the photo with the perfume. The snow leopard is a perfect symbol for the perfume and what it stands for. Solitude, beauty, and precision.
It is not easy finding much about the brand SASVA in the internet. An Indian man called Sriman Subramanian is supposed to be the founder and creative director of the brand. He works with internationally known perfumers for his niche perfumes. There is an Instagram page of the brand, which one can partly see without being a registered user. It gives additional pictures celebrating the Indian culture with some of the perfumes. The website is registered in Italy.
“Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” was created by Jordi Fernandez, a Spanish senior perfumer of the company Givaudan. From the list of all his creations on FRAGRANTICA or the parfumo platform one can deduce that his speciality are unisex/male scents with quite some stronger ingredients like oud or cardamom. In this regard he was the perfect choice for a clearly non-sweet perfume based on the Ladakh landscape.
SASVA’s “Light of the Earth / Noor-e-Zamin” is a very special perfume for special days. It is one of those that provide support and assistance to the wearer in a very cool way. Sometimes this is of utmost importance. No further words are necessary.