Nirmala
Nirmala — Sanskrit for "pure" — opens with grapefruit rather than the citrus-bergamot standard, which gives it a slightly bitter, effervescent sparkle before stepping aside.
The scent fingerprint
Weighted by intensity across 12 accords.
Every perfume in Sillage is represented as a distribution across canonical accord slugs — a lingua franca for scent. Two fragrances with overlapping fingerprints are scent-twins, even if they share no literal note.
- Floral85
- Woody65
- Fresh50
- Aromatic
The note pyramid
- Grapefruit
- Grapefruit
- Jasmine
- Jasmine
- Tonka Bean
- Tonka Bean
By the editors · 2 min readNirmala — Sanskrit for "pure" — opens with grapefruit rather than the citrus-bergamot standard, which gives it a slightly bitter, effervescent sparkle before stepping aside. Jasmine is the sole heart note and earns that solitary position: it is rich and full-bodied, with none of the transparent prettiness of modern jasmine accords. Molinard understood their material — this is jasmine at work, slightly heady, organic, and unhurried.
The base is warm without being overdressed: sandalwood and cedar give structure, tonka and vanilla soften without sweetening, musk keeps it personal and skin-adjacent. Nirmala is a soliflore with the conviction the genre rarely sustains this well. A 1955 composition that wears its age as a credential.
Scent twins
Factual metadata (name, house, year, notes) is seeded from public datasets. The editorial reading and scent fingerprint are written by Claude against our house style — none of it is scraped prose. Read our methodology.
