The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Strawberry Support arrived in 2024 from d.grayi. James Nguyen composed this one himself, and the name does the heavy lifting by foregrounding the fruit at the center of everything. Gotu kola and vine open the door before the berries even show up, setting a leafy, almost medicinal stage with a cool bitterness that grounds the composition from the first spray. That green curtain matters more than it seems, since it keeps the fruit from arriving on a blank canvas. The berries come in at the heart, carried by strawberry seed oil for a natural, slightly oily richness that reads authentic to skin rather than like a synthetic top note engineered to vanish. White musk and baked sweets anchor the drydown, keeping things soft and intimate instead of throwing sweetness across the room.
What makes Strawberry Support interesting is the gotu kola up top. It's an unusual choice, an herb with a faintly bitter, cooling greenness that brings something medicinal and vegetal to a fruit-led composition. The vine alongside it doubles down on that greenness, weaving a leafy lattice that frames the eventual strawberry in living material rather than sugar. The strawberry seed oil at the heart is equally deliberate, carrying a natural, almost waxy depth that holds across hours on skin.
The evolution
Strawberry Support opens with a cool snap of gotu kola leaf and damp vine, the kind of green that clings to fingertips after pulling weeds in a shaded garden. The greenness hangs in the foreground as the fruit slowly unfolds, releasing a quiet, jammy sweetness that reads more like fruit flesh than candy. As the composition moves through its middle phase, the berries settle into the white musk base, picking up a faint dusting of baked pastry that softens the edges and rounds out any sharpness left from the green opening. The strawberry seed oil carries its richness through this transition, lending a waxy depth that keeps the fruit from feeling like a fleeting top note. In its later stretch, only the skin-close musk and a whisper of the opening greens remain, leaving behind a soft, intimate trace of berry and musk that lingers close to the body rather than projecting outward.
Cultural impact
Strawberry Support sits within d.grayi's catalog of releases centered on familiar subjects rendered through unusual material choices. The house has released other compositions in a similar vein, including White Cat Milktea and Cosmic Serpent, each taking a recognizable reference and filtering it through the perfumer's own materials and structure. The strawberry here reads as one such subject, treated with the gotu kola, vine, and strawberry seed oil that give it a grounded, textural identity.
