Tanaïs, is a name I've given myself, is a portmanteau of the first two letters of my three names — a name that can be uttered in a single breath, free of patrilineage, honoring the Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim lineages of Bengal. I wanted to find a meridian between identities that honor where I’ve come from and where I am headed.
Tanaïs (née Tanwi Nandini islam, is a New York City based author and owner of their eponymous luxury, small-batch, independent perfume, beauty and design studio. Their perfumes are made with the finest and some of the rarest botanical materials in the world, sourced from family-owned farms, Tanaïs' perfumes are opulent, original works of art. At the heart of their writing and their perfuming practice, is liberation, in how we feel our innate beauty, how we feel powerful and witnessed in our bodies, our homes in the world.
They are the author of In Sensorium: Notes for My People, Winner of the 2022 Kirkus Prize, a genre-defying book that offers a critical, alternative feminist perspective of South Asian history through the lens of scent, sensuality, South Asian and Muslim perfume cultures, colonization and its aftermath: the environmental and border crises around the world. They are the author of the critically-acclaimed novel BRIGHT LINES (Penguin 2015), which was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize.
Their work is multi-disciplinary, dynamic, intersectional and feminist. Over the course of their career, they’ve worked as a community organizer, a domestic violence court advocate, a probations intake officer, and youth arts educator. Tanaïs is a self-taught perfumer, amassing a library of 500 fragrant raw materials, which led to the creation of Hi Wildflower, an award-winning beauty and fragrance brand, which transitioned into Studio Tanaïs in 2021.
They are currently working on their third book, a speculative sci-fi book, Stellar Smoke, which will be published by Dutton Books in 2025.
ABOUT OUR BEAUTY DIRECTOR, TALYSHA MONÉE
Raised in San Antonio, TX, Talysha Moneé moved to NYC in 2010 and graduated from Makeup Designery Soho, starting their first film in the summer of 2011. Talysha has worked on over fifty independent films since then, showcasing a range of skills in beauty and sfx makeup. Inspired by punk aestheteics, taxidermy, and going into nature to find the beginnings of makeup, like pigments, berries, dirts and clays, Their beauty practice honors the delicate interplay between human anatomy, sen-suality, and cycles of life and death. As Beauty Director of Tanaïs, their vision for beauty is to create spaces of inclusivity across races, genders, abilities, and to foster creativity and opportunity for all.
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