The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Déjà Vu Mood is part of And Other Stories' perfume oil line, a roll-on format the fashion house has favored for its unpretentious intimacy. The name itself suggests something half-remembered, a sensory flicker returning before you can name it. Wild raspberry, saffron, cotton candy, driftwood. An odd assembly of materials on paper, but the intent reads clearly: build a scent that smells like the second before you realize you've been somewhere before. The perfume oil sits close, warming against the pulse points and releasing its notes in slow increments rather than a single projection. Raspberry arrives first, jammy and slightly feral, its sweetness pulled in two directions by the saffron that follows.
What makes this composition structurally interesting is the use of jabuticaba, an unusual tropical fruit note, set against the more familiar raspberry in the opening. That pairing gives the top a bruised, wine-like edge rather than a simple candied fruit read. The tropical fruit lends a dense, almost fermented roundness that anchors the raspberry's brightness in something weightier, pulling it away from a thin, syrupy sweetness.
The evolution
The first twenty minutes are all fruit and resin, raspberry reading less like a berry than like dark jam warmed by elemi's lemony pepper. Jabuticaba adds an unusual thickness underneath, almost wine-like, keeping the sweetness from feeling thin. Around the thirty-minute mark, jasmine sambac and saffron arrive together, the saffron giving the white floral a spicy, almost leather-adjacent warmth that stops the heart from turning soapy. Cyclamen adds a faint coolness at the edges. By the two-hour mark the cotton candy and ambroxan begin to dominate, and this is where the fragrance pivots hard. The sweetness doesn't vanish. It dries out, flattens, picks up a mineral saltiness from the ambroxan, while driftwood underneath keeps the whole thing from dissolving into sugar. The result on skin is a warm, musky amber for the final four to five hours, noticeably drier than the opening promised, still sweet-adjacent but with the candy note more memory than presence.
Cultural impact
Déjà Vu Mood sits within And Other Stories' perfume oil range, released as a roll-on format that releases scent in measured doses rather than broad sprays. The composition works through a fruity-gourmand register built on raspberry and cotton candy, but the inclusion of jabuticaba and the deliberate dryness of the drydown set it apart from straightforward sweetness. Jabuticaba lends a dense, wine-like roundness to the opening, pushing the raspberry away from simple candy and toward something riper, almost fermented. That tropical fruit gives the top a bruised depth before the heart unfolds.
