For most of my life, someone was asking me to choose.
Egyptian or Irish. The polished professional or the restless one. The son who stayed, or the one who left. Every room I walked into had a version of me it preferred, and most were polite enough to tell me which.
I tried. For years I tried. I kept the parts of me that fit and put the rest away for later. Later never came, because that is not how a person works. Choosing one side does not make you whole. It makes you half, and tired.
Santi Peccatori is Italian for Holy Sinners. It is the name I gave to the refusal.
Where it started
Before perfume, I worked in visual merchandising for luxury fashion houses. It is a strict discipline. You have seconds to make a stranger feel something about an object, and you learn quickly that restraint persuades more than noise does. Later I worked in hospitality development in Dubai, where I learned that a welcome begins before anyone speaks, in the light of a room, its temperature, and what it smells like.
Both jobs taught me the same thing. A feeling arrives before a sentence does.
Why two lines
When I began building the house, the idea came before a single note. I wanted a collection that did not ask anyone to pick one version of themselves.
So there are two lines. SANTI for the day: the office, the club, the court or the studio. PECCATORI for the night: dinners, soirées, everything after dark. They are the same person at different hours. Day has its laws. Night has its own.
I worked with two French perfumers to compose the first four. Maud Chabanis created Immortali, Dominanti and Amori. Xavier Blaizot created Devoti. I brought them a brief built on contradiction. They brought it back as something I could wear.
What I will not rush
Every bottle is composed at 25% concentration. Every batch then rests for ninety days at a steady 18 to 20°C before it is filtered and bottled. I do that part myself. It is slow, it is costly, and it is the step I would defend first.
We release in limited batches. I will not bottle something before it is ready, so there is only ever so much of it.
Ireland, Egypt and everywhere between
I live between Donegal and Egypt. Wet green hills and desert light. People assume the two pull against each other. They taught me you can hold two climates in one life and lose nothing.
The house debuted at the Niche Show in London in April 2026, and the launch allocation sold out over the weekend. Since then Santi Peccatori has found homes in perfumeries in London, Sicily, Cork, Paris, and Saudi Arabia.
I still get asked to choose. I just have an answer now.
I am both.
Saif Bassim
Founder and Creative Director
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