The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Spring Festival is d'Annam's translation of Lunar New Year through the lens of someone who grew up living it. Part of Chapter 3: Majestic China, the 2025 release was formulated by Anh Ngo to bottle the sensory chaos of the season: mandarin trees heavy on the counter, paper lanterns glowing through doorways, jujube and candied hawthorn sold at every street corner. The fragrance isn't a postcard of the holiday. It's the version that happens in real kitchens, between relatives who won't leave.
Most festive fragrances chase sweetness and call it a day. Spring Festival builds its celebration around texture instead. Plum blossom and jujube bring that chewy, almost dried-fruit density. Mandarin cuts through with brightness rather than citrus shout. The paper lantern accord, unusual on any pyramid, grounds everything in a waxy, slightly resinous glow that reads more like atmosphere than a single ingredient. Spicy-fruity without tipping into gourmand territory.
The evolution
The opening lands fast: mandarin bright and almost sharp, candied hawthorn sweetness rising behind it like steam off a wok. Within 20 minutes the jujube takes over, pulling the composition toward something denser, almost dried-fruit chewy. The plum blossom sits at the edges, barely a floral, more a softness that keeps the spice from getting aggressive. Through the 3-hour mark the paper lantern wax builds. By hour 5 you're left with a warm resin close, the sticky-fruit sweetness now a memory and the incense-like drydown doing the heavy lifting. On a sweater the next morning: plum skin, faint benzoin, the ghost of something celebratory still hanging on.
Cultural impact
Spring Festival treats Lunar New Year as genuine cultural source material, and the jujube-hawthorn pairing lands with startling specificity for wearers with Chinese heritage, the olfactory equivalent of a relative's kitchen at the height of holiday preparations. The opening leans juicy and almost candied, then pivots into something denser and more composed: warm resins surface, dried fruit deepens, and a quiet thread of incense pulls the whole thing toward something contemplative rather than confectionary.
