The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
James Nguyen has said d.grayi treats each fragrance like a diary entry, a snapshot of a feeling or place worth preserving. Pandan fits that template exactly. It's a material rooted in Southeast Asian kitchens, the kind of leaf that turns rice and desserts a quiet green, the kind of scent that means home to millions of people who've never encountered it in perfumery. Nguyen wanted to translate that, not just the smell, but the way pandan occupies memory. Bread and coconut milk open the composition, landing the wearer somewhere familiar before the pandan arrives to do its own quiet work. The result is a fragrance that bridges cultural specificity and gourmand accessibility, recognizably Southeast Asian, unexpectedly wearable.
What makes Pandan unusual is how it handles sweetness. Rather than defaulting to sugar or caramel, the composition builds its gourmand character around bread and waffle, a starchier, more grounded sweetness that doesn't rely on the usual suspects. Coconut milk adds fat without adding sugar, and the pandan keeps everything green enough to feel alive rather than cloying. Sandalwood in the heart gives the fragrance somewhere warm to land, while pine resin in the base adds a resinous counterpoint that stops the sweetness from flattening out entirely. The result is a fragrance that reads as dessert but breathes like something with actual food on the stove.
The evolution
The first twenty minutes do the unexpected. Instead of launching into sweetness, Pandan opens with bread, dense, yeasty, the kind of warm starch that fills a kitchen. Coconut milk sits underneath, adding a creamy fatness that makes the whole opening feel substantial rather than light. Then the pandan begins to emerge, green and extract-sweet, taking over the heart as the bread fades. It's not a dramatic transition, more like a slow handoff, the way one smell quietly replaces another while you're not paying attention. By hour two, sandalwood has settled into the composition, adding warmth, and the waffle has arrived to anchor everything. The drydown is where this fragrance earns its longevity. Vanilla and pine resin hold the base together, and the waffle note persists, not as an accent, but as the thing that defines what you're smelling. On most skin types, this lasts through an eight-hour day with moderate sillage. It stays close, but it doesn't disappear.
Cultural impact
Pandan sits in an interesting space, it's a fragrance built around a note that most Western noses have encountered only in desserts and rice, not in perfumery. That specificity is both its limitation and its strength. For wearers who grew up with pandan, it reads as home. For those who don't, it reads as discovery, a material that behaves unlike anything else in the gourmand family. The fragrance has found its audience among collectors who seek out unusual materials, and among wearers who want something that smells like nothing else in their wardrobe.
