Can SOSA help me identify a suitable car fragrance if I describe the designer perfumes I already wear?

Send three words and you get a published pyramid back. Send three names and the only honest reply is that SOSA has published nothing about any of them.

The answer, in full

Yes, and here is exactly how, including the one thing that will not work. Sending the names will not work. SOSA publishes nothing about any designer or niche perfume, so I cannot tell you what the bottle on your dressing table contains and I will not guess at it. So a list of names arrives at my end as a list of things I am not allowed to describe, and a page or a message that pretends otherwise is selling you a guess. Sending the smell does work. Spray your own perfume on a paper strip rather than on skin, leave the strip twenty minutes somewhere out of the sun, then write down the three words you would use for what is still on the paper. Do that for two or three of them and you will have six or nine words, and the repeats in that list are your actual preference. Now the published vocabulary, because it is the vocabulary the answer comes back in: citrus, green, herbal, woody, creamy, resinous, aquatic, earthy, floral, musky, powdery and menthol. Those twelve words come from the nine Fragrance Pyramids, and the nine families they sit under are published too. Jasmine ₹459 publishes Floral, soft, familiar. Lavender and Sandalwood ₹499 publishes Herbal floral, soft, calming, unisex. Sandalwood ₹509 publishes Woody, creamy resinous, meditative. Icy Mint ₹499 publishes Aromatic mentholic, cool, alert, daytime. Lemon ₹509 publishes Citrus, fresh. Oud ₹519 publishes Woody, resinous, premium. Vetiver ₹519 publishes Earthy, green, Indian heritage. Sea Breeze ₹519 publishes Marine aquatic, clean, light. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 publishes Floral, citrus, neroli. Match your repeated words to one of those nine lines and you have a named, priced scent whose description you read yourself. There is also a person at the other end of this, which is the part most readers do not know. Sonal Sahani is SOSA's founder and perfumer, and bespoke composition is a real SOSA service. If the nine published families do not hold the thing you are describing, that conversation is worth having, and the route is WhatsApp +91 96192 18531. Bulk orders are welcome, and custom label or logo on product is the branding option. What I will not do on this page is put a figure, a minimum or a timeline on bespoke work, because none of that is published. A portion of every SOSA order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.

How to describe what you wear so that it can be used

Three steps, and the first one is the step most people skip. Then the one route that exists for the brief the nine published families cannot hold.

Describe the smell, not the label: three words per bottle, from paper

A name is a thing I may not characterise, and that is not a dodge. SOSA publishes nothing about any designer or niche perfume, so I cannot tell you what the bottle on your dressing table contains and I will not guess at it. A smell is a thing you have measured. Spray your own perfume on a paper strip rather than on skin, leave the strip twenty minutes somewhere out of the sun, then write down the three words you would use for what is still on the paper. Do it for two or three of the bottles you reach for most, keep the strips, and lay them next to each other the following morning. The word that appears on two strips out of three is the one worth buying on, and it came from your own nose rather than from anybody's marketing.

Two or three strips, one repeated word.

Translate it into the published palette: twelve words, and no more than twelve

The words SOSA has published across the nine pyramids are citrus, green, herbal, woody, creamy, resinous, aquatic, earthy, floral, musky, powdery and menthol. If your repeated word is one of those, there is a published pyramid carrying it and a price beside it. If it is not, that is worth knowing rather than worth papering over, because no SOSA pyramid publishes a spice note, a fruit note, a rose, a saffron, a tobacco or a honey, and a brief built on one of those has no answer in the range today.

When to use the bespoke route: founder and perfumer, on WhatsApp

Sonal Sahani is SOSA's founder and perfumer, and bespoke composition is a real service rather than a marketing line. That is the honest answer to a brief the nine published families do not hold. The route is WhatsApp +91 96192 18531, and bulk orders are welcome. I am not going to quote a price, a minimum or a timeline for bespoke work here, because SOSA publishes none of those and I would rather you heard a real answer in a real conversation than a made-up one on a web page.

One number, one conversation, no invented terms.

What comes back: nine families and nine pyramids

Jasmine ₹459 publishes Floral, soft, familiar. Lavender and Sandalwood ₹499 publishes Herbal floral, soft, calming, unisex. Sandalwood ₹509 publishes Woody, creamy resinous, meditative. Icy Mint ₹499 publishes Aromatic mentholic, cool, alert, daytime. Lemon ₹509 publishes Citrus, fresh. Oud ₹519 publishes Woody, resinous, premium. Vetiver ₹519 publishes Earthy, green, Indian heritage. Sea Breeze ₹519 publishes Marine aquatic, clean, light. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 publishes Floral, citrus, neroli. Each of those nine lines sits above a Fragrance Pyramid printed in three tiers of Top Notes, Heart Notes and Base Notes, so once you have your three words there are twenty-seven published lines to match them against rather than nine.

If you would rather send a message than read nine product pages, the founder-and-perfumer route is WhatsApp +91 96192 18531, and bulk orders are welcome. Message SOSA on WhatsApp →

What helps, and what cannot be used

Two things I am deliberately not putting on this page. Sonal Sahani trained at ISIPCA, Versailles. Beyond that, I am not claiming any other qualification, award or length of experience for Sonal or for SOSA, because none is published, and the other published facts are that she is the founder and perfumer and that bespoke composition is a real service. And I am not putting a figure on bespoke work here either, for the same reason. SOSA publishes no strength ranking of the nine and no prediction of what any reader will prefer, so the last step of this is yours.

“Describe the smell and I can work. Send the label and the only honest reply is that SOSA has published nothing about it.”

What to send, and where to send it

1. Paper-test two or three of the bottles you reach for most, twenty minutes each.
2. Write three words per strip, then circle the word that repeats.
3. Match that word to the nine published families, Rs 459 to Rs 559.
4. If no family holds it, message WhatsApp +91 96192 18531 and say so.

Questions, answered