The Index · House Profile
A French House.
A Japanese Name.
Asian Oud.
Katana is registered in France, named after a Japanese sword, and fills its bottles with Turkish and Arabic titles. The through line is not a country. It is a man who started buying raw oud from India in 2012 and never stopped.
House Spotlight
Most houses are a place. This one is a supply chain. Katana Parfums is French, founded in 2021 by Alp Veliogulliari and designed in France, and almost nothing else about it points at Europe.
The origin the house tells is specific and unusually small. In 2012 he bought traditional oils and incense from India, worked out that the raw oud and the genuinely prized materials come from Asia, and started making attars from unprocessed material for his own use. Nine years later that became a brand. His own line on it is that it all began with a surprising discovery that changed the course of his life.
The name follows from the same place. A katana is a Japanese sword, and the house uses it as a symbol of Asia, something it describes as powerful, ancestral and sharp, which is how it talks about working on the compositions by hand. So the emblem is Japanese, the materials are Southeast Asian and Indian, the address is French, and the fragrances are called Hayal and Hikaye and Zakhrafa. The brand explains the sword. It has never explained the Turkish and the Arabic.
In a world where the ordinary is often adorned with artifice, we have chosen the path of authenticity.
That is the house's own sentence, and the catalogue backs it up more than most such sentences do. Katana runs two collections and the difference between them is the single most useful thing to understand before you spend money here.
The Collection Oriental is the 50ml line, and it is where five of our six sit. It is the accessible half: gourmands, white florals, one serious rose. The Collection Naturelle is the artisanal line, bottled at 30ml and labelled extrait, and it is where the house publishes actual concentration percentages, up to thirty percent. That is also where the prices climb steeply. When you see a Katana bottle cost twice what the one beside it costs, the tier is usually the reason, not the hype.
One correction worth making, because it is easy to get wrong and we had it wrong ourselves until we checked. Alp Veliogulliari did not compose everything with the house's name on it. The brand publishes no perfumer on any product page at all, which means every attribution has to be assembled from outside the house. Do that and the picture changes: 1001 Nights is credited to Ahmed Mostafa, the perfumer behind Elixir Attar, and Katana's own copy describes it as made together with Alp rather than by him. Alp also composes for other houses, Nebiru Parfvms among them.
Which brings up the two that have not reached our shelves yet, and both are the sort of thing worth waiting for. Ambre Fumé was built under a self imposed constraint, and the brand states it flatly: it contains no floral notes whatsoever. An amber with every flower deliberately removed is a harder brief than it sounds, because florals are what most perfumers use to round a resin off. Divide & Conquer is not really a Katana release at all. It is a co-brand with the German house Nebiru Parfvms, three roses chosen because they refuse to blend, set against civet, hyraceum and Bengalese oud. Two names, one bottle, as the brand puts it. Neither is listed here yet.
What follows is the six we do carry, in three pairs. Every one is stocked as a 2ml KSI hand decant alongside the full house bottle, on the same product page.
The Gourmands
The easiest way into the house and the two that explain its appetite. Both are sweet without apology, and both are built on one specific material doing the work a generic accord usually does. A praline vanilla that spends its first minutes being green and tart, and a coffee that is bitter and regional rather than the mocha smear most gourmands settle for. Neither is subtle. Neither is trying to be.
Vanille Nacré
2026 · 2ml $14.99 · 50ml $216Green apple and praline over Madagascar vanilla. Crisp green apple and juicy pomegranate open bright, then a heart of melting praline, milky coconut and soft almond turns it properly gourmand. Guaiac, rosewood and rose bring warmth under a veil of musk, and Madagascar vanilla with tonka closes it rich and faintly spiced. The apple and pomegranate opening is what saves this from being another vanilla, buying a few minutes of brightness before the praline takes hold. After that it is unapologetically sweet and sits close to dessert, so anyone who wants their vanilla dry should look elsewhere. The newest thing the house has released and the cheapest bottle here.
Green Apple · Pomegranate · Praline · Coconut · Almond · Guaiac · Rosewood · Madagascar Vanilla · Tonka Bean
Zakhrafa
2023 · 2ml $19.99 · 50ml $286Colombian coffee and ripe cherry, which should not work together and does. A scarlet cherry and a Colombian coffee of real character sit together in the base, surprisingly at ease with each other. Above them white flowers, lily of the valley and jasmine grandiflorum, with chocolate and hazelnut filling out a gourmand middle. The house calls the result an olfactory puzzle, and the coffee is the whole reason to try it, bitter and specific rather than the generic mocha accord most gourmands reach for, with the cherry stopping it turning into a dessert. It is also loud and very sweet, so one spray is plenty. Zakhrafa is Arabic for ornament, and the brand says the name was not chosen idly.
Colombian Coffee · Cherry · White Flowers · Lily of the Valley · Jasmine Grandiflorum · Chocolate · HazelnutThe White Florals
Two readings of the same family, pulled in opposite directions. One is the lightest thing the house makes, jasmine sambac and lily of the valley kept deliberately airy, and the brand is candid that it is its most European and least oriental fragrance. The other takes tuberose, the most divisive white flower there is, gives it room, and runs black tea underneath to stop it going soft. Put them on opposite wrists and you can hear one house arguing with itself about how much weight a flower should carry.
Hayal
2023 · 2ml $19.99 · 50ml $286A white floral built like mountain mist. Lily of the valley and jasmine sambac lead a concentrate of white flowers, lifted by an acidulated citrus brightness. Tonka bean and vanilla add roundness through the middle, and a discreet amber holds the base without weighing it down. The house describes a misty mountain meadow and sets the lily of the valley's spring freshness against the jasmine's warmth, and the balance reads as true, because the sambac is used generously and still never turns heady. The flip side is that it is the most conventional thing here by the brand's own admission, so if you came to Katana for something strange this is not the one.
Lily of the Valley · Jasmine Sambac · White Flowers · Citrus · Tonka Bean · Vanilla · Amber
Hikaye
2023 · 2ml $19.99 · 50ml $286Tuberose and black tea. It opens gourmand, sweet and floral on white flowers, with tuberose spreading warm sweetness through the heart. A luxurious amber rounds the blend into something properly oriental, and black tea threads a quiet dryness underneath. The tea is what lifts this above a straight tuberose amber, holding an edge against all that sweetness. Tuberose is a divisive material though, and here it is given plenty of room, so if the note reads soapy or funereal on you this will not change your mind. Hikaye means a story, and the house presents it as a journey to different places.
White Flowers · Tuberose · Amber · Black Tea · Woody AccordWhere It Gets Serious
These two sit on either side of the line that divides the house, and putting them together is the fastest way to see what that line costs. The first is the heaviest thing in the Collection Oriental, a powdered rose with tobacco and leather for weight. The second is from the Collection Naturelle, bottled at 30ml as an extrait, made in collaboration with another house, and priced at roughly twice its neighbour for a smaller bottle. The step up is real and so is the gap.
Je Vois Encore Qadah Dans Tes Yeux
2023 · 2ml $19.99 · 50ml $286Powdered rose and tobacco, fixed with a touch of oud. Mandarin and bergamot open fresh and soft before powdery roses take the centre, with jasmine and patchouli easing the edges. Balsam, myrrh and olibanum deepen the middle, and a close of sandalwood, leather, tobacco and vanilla rests on just enough agarwood to hold the whole thing in place. The rose here is powdered rather than jammy, which is the harder version to pull off, and the tobacco and leather underneath give it a weight most rose fragrances never reach. The note list is long and it takes a good hour to settle, so judge it late rather than early. The house has never said who or what Qadah is.
Mandarin · Bergamot · Powdery Rose · Jasmine · Myrrh · Olibanum · Patchouli · Leather · Tobacco · Oud
1001 Nights
2024 · 2ml $59.99 · 30ml $515Three roses and five agarwoods, in the most ambitious thing the house has its name on. An Elixir Attar and Katana collaboration, and the only one of these with a perfumer actually credited: Ahmed Mostafa, made together with Alp. Saffron, pink pepper and black pepper open over agarwood smoke, with elemi, anise and agarwood ketones giving the top an almost medicinal edge. Taif, Bulgarian and Turkish rose stack through the heart against Hojari frankincense, tobacco, honey and heliotrope. Benzoin, opoponax, vetiver, ambergris, amber, musk, tonka, leather, vanilla and both Filipino and Maroke agarwood close it dense and resinous. It is also the only fragrance here with a full pyramid published by the brand rather than a flat list, which tells you where the attention went. It comes only in 30ml, and the density that makes it impressive makes it wrong for warm weather or close quarters. One spray.
Saffron · Agarwood Smoke · Elemi · Taif Rose · Bulgarian Rose · Hojari Frankincense · Tobacco · Honey · Ambergris · Filipino AgarwoodHow to hear a house
- Start with Vanille Nacré. It is the cheapest bottle here and the clearest statement of the house's appetite. If a praline vanilla that opens on green apple is not for you, the gourmand half of this catalogue will not be either, and you will know inside ten minutes.
- Then Zakhrafa, straight after. The same sweet tooth pointed at coffee and cherry instead of vanilla and praline. Hearing those two back to back tells you more about how this house thinks than any note list will.
- Put the two white florals on opposite wrists. Hayal is the lightest thing here and the brand admits it is the least oriental. Hikaye is tuberose given full room with black tea underneath. Same family, same house, completely different decisions about weight.
- Tuberose is the test. It is a material people either love or cannot go near, and Hikaye does not hedge. If it reads soapy on you, nothing in that bottle will talk you round, so take the decant first.
- Know which collection you are buying. The Collection Oriental is the 50ml line and it is where five of these six sit. The Collection Naturelle is the 30ml artisanal line, labelled extrait, and it is the only place the house publishes concentration percentages. Most of the price jumps in this catalogue are a change of collection rather than a change of ambition.
- Qadah is the grown up one. Powdered rose rather than jammy, with tobacco and leather carrying the weight and just enough agarwood to pin it down. It takes a full hour to settle, so do not judge it on the opening.
- 1001 Nights is a different order of thing. Three roses, five agarwoods, Hojari frankincense and ambergris, in 30ml rather than 50ml. It is also a collaboration with Elixir Attar rather than a house solo. Earn your way to it through the decant.
- Respect the sweetness. Most of this house runs sweet and loud. One spray does the work of two or three from something thinner, and overapplying is the easiest way to fall out with these.
- Decant first, bottle second. Every fragrance here is stocked as a 2ml KSI hand decant and as the full house bottle on the same product page. The decant is drawn from an authentic bottle into an atomizer so you can wear it properly before committing. All fragrance purchases are final sale.
- Questions before you order? Email info@kaleidoscopescentindex.com and we will tell you which one is actually yours.
Two collections.
One obsession.
The Katana we carry, in decants and in full bottles, on one page. If you only take three, take Vanille Nacré, Hikaye and Je Vois Encore Qadah Dans Tes Yeux.
Shop Katana ParfumsWhere confidence meets chemistry and every note compounds character