IDMAN: Perfumery Between Creation and Chaos
Born in Dubai and crafted in Grasse, IDMAN explores the tension between control and instinct, offering unisex compositions designed to be worn freely across skin, hair, and daily rituals.
IDMAN – a Dubai-born niche fragrance house, produced in Grasse, France – built around scent as a direct channel for emotion and identity. Its founder, Syrian entrepreneur Joelle Sakkal, frames perfume as a form of communication, intimate, instinctive, and often stronger than language.
“Idman” translates to “addiction” in Arabic, and the brand treats that idea literally: the urge to return to a smell, to wear it again, to feel its mood on your skin. Joelle described choosing a word that travels easily across cultures while carrying weight and immediacy.
Sakkal’s entry into fragrance began while studying fashion in London, where a graduation project led her toward perfumery. She then spent time in Grasse to study and research scent more seriously, and the first concept for IDMAN took shape there.
Her personal background is part of the brand’s logic. Sakkal has lived in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Dubai, and London – a set of places with very different sensory “languages,” social codes, and ideas of presence. IDMAN translates that mix into a modern Gulf brand that feels global in its references, while staying grounded in Arabic scent culture and intensity.
IDMAN launched its first collection in 2025 with four pieces presented in three formats: an extrait de parfum, two “over all sprays,” and a perfume balm.
That format choice matters. Instead of treating perfume as a single ritual (spray, done), IDMAN treats it as a system you can wear across hair, body, pulse points, and on-the-go moments – with concentration and longevity kept central to the idea.
The brand’s visual language underlines the point: icy-toned bottles topped with raw, irregular crystal caps. For Bermuda Waters, the stopper is clear quartz, positioned as a personal object as much as a design element, with each cap shaped to feel singular.
IDMAN explicitly positions the line as unisex, and that comes through in the structure: boozy smoke and woods, musc and herbs, citrus-floral clarity, and solar heat. The brand’s own language emphasizes high concentration and lasting presence across the range.
Dubai has become a launchpad for perfume brands that combine regional scent expectations (depth, sillage, persistence) with a contemporary design and product vocabulary. IDMAN’s point of difference is its format-led approach: extrait plus all-over EDP-style sprays plus a balm, offered as a wardrobe rather than a single bottle.
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