Who: Basel Binjabr, founder and artistic director of Thameen. Basel has based his luxury fragrance house in London to ensure the fragrances are viewed as internationally contemporary, balancing Eastern opulence with Western refinement. His gentle nature and earnest enthusiasm for his work is infectious and we are big fans of the Thameen range.

Today I’m Wearing The Hope by Thameen, which is our our newest fragrance, inspired by the Hope Diamond, the most famous diamond in the world.

I would not leave my home without putting perfume on and I apply it at least twice a day. Sometimes I’ll use different fragrances for the morning and evening, preferring deeper ones at night. I feel fragrance makes my life more productive, when I meet people and they smell something nice on me, their appetite will be more welcoming,

And my personal style of applying fragrance is to use it on pulses and then on my hands, when I rub them as if I’m washing them and then place on my face…

In the Gulf region, perfume is part of our culture and religion, so we have a big relationship with it. Sometimes it gets extreme, it’s not unusual to know people with 50 or 60 different fragrances.

My late father was a private collector of Taif rose oils, he’d fly to Istanbul or anywhere, if he’d heard that a trader had the best rose oil from that season and buy the entire quantity for his own use. In our part of the world, people who love perfume carry small 15ml glass vials which we fill with our favourite oils and my father always carried a vial of his special rose oil.