Why Nikhil Singhal Created Gentlemen

When Nikhil Singhal set out to create Gentlemen for World of Perfumers, he was working with a brief rooted in one of the most enduring and underappreciated compositions in 25 years of men's fine fragrance: capture the DNA of the 1999 New York classic that master perfumer Alberto Morillas created when asked to bottle the energy of Manhattan for the modern man — the green-grapefruit-bergamot-violet-gardenia-sandalwood-musk formula that Parfumo's community calls "a 10/10 masterpiece — the best well-balanced designer perfume," that Basenotes reviewers describe as "more than the sum of its parts — and that's the art of perfumery," and that the fragrance world consistently names alongside Bleu de Chanel as one of the finest fresh-woody masculines in the designer space. And make it available from ₹99.

Nikhil Singhal is the founder and master perfumer of World of Perfumers — India's finest destination for inspired luxury fragrances. Trained in Dubai and drawing on fragrance oils sourced from Dubai, France, and Switzerland, his vision with Gentlemen was direct: that every Indian man — whether heading to an office in Hyderabad, a college campus in Pune, or a summer weekend in Goa — deserves the same freshly-cut-green-grass opening, the same violet-gardenia-sage heart, and the same sandalwood-guaiac wood-musk base that Alberto Morillas assembled when given one of the most specific briefs in designer masculine history: capture New York City. From just ₹99.

With Gentlemen, Nikhil faced the defining technical challenge of fresh-green perfumery: the cut-grass note. Green notes — particularly the vivid, realistic character of freshly cut grass — are among the most technically demanding and most quickly dated materials in fine fragrance. The challenge is that genuinely natural-smelling green notes exist in an extraordinarily narrow window of concentration and quality. Too little and the composition reads as a generic fresh citrus, indistinguishable from a hundred similar masculines. Too much and the greenness becomes sharp, synthetic, or headache-inducing — the quality that gives green notes their reputation for difficulty. Morillas' genius in the 1999 original was using the green note not as a supporting accord but as the dominant first impression — a bold creative choice that required exceptional quality of raw material to execute without the composition tipping into artificiality. Gentlemen uses the same foundational understanding: the green note must feel like a memory of a summer morning, not a synthetic approximation of one. Nikhil sourced green, bergamot, and sandalwood materials of the quality this 25-year-old classic demands, calibrating the freshness of the opening against the warmth of the woody-musk base with the balance that has kept the original in continuous production since 1999.

Every bottle of Gentlemen that leaves the World of Perfumers workshop carries that intention: to give every Indian man the clean confidence, the distinctive freshness, and the warm masculine depth of a fragrance Alberto Morillas created as a love letter to the most energetic city on earth — made for the man who moves through his world with the same energy.

Gentlemen is not just an inspired fragrance. It is Nikhil Singhal's belief — made wearable — that every Indian man deserves to smell like the most confident, most distinctive man in any room. That green notes, grapefruit, and sandalwood belong to every man in India. From ₹99.