The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Grapefruit & Sandalwood started with an admission. David Dobrik told his perfumer his favorite scents were a Sharpie and air fresheners. Which, fine, isn't the most helpful brief. But Céline Barel took the honesty seriously. She pivoted to what he actually reached for, citrus, amber, sandalwood, and built something unexpected around them. Violet leaf snuck in somewhere along the way. That wasn't in the original brief either. Barel simply needed something to bridge the grapefruit's brightness and the sandalwood's warmth without disrupting either. The result is #02: a fragrance that does exactly what it says on the bottle, and then quietly does a little more.
Sandalwood and grapefruit aren't an obvious pairing. One is creamy, warm, almost meditative. The other is sharp, tart, designed to wake you up. The trick is the violet leaf, it arrives around the heart to cool what citrus started and gently hand the reins to wood. Without it, the fragrance loses its middle act. With it, there's a conversation between bright and soft that carries the whole composition. The powdery amber in the base then takes the warmth further, extending what sandalwood began until it becomes something close and intimate rather than bold and projecting. It's a fragrance built for restraint, for presence without announcement.
The evolution
The grapefruit hits first, a sharp, tart brightness that genuinely announces itself. Not loud, but confident. Then something shifts. Sandalwood doesn't overtake so much as soften the edges. Violet leaf threads through in the background, adding a subtle green coolness that keeps the citrus from becoming sweet. Over time, the fragrance evolves through several distinct phases. What follows is the quiet part. Amber and sandalwood settle close to the skin, creating a powdery warmth that doesn't project so much as linger. The grapefruit fades to memory. The drydown lasts for hours, on skin, longer on fabric, leaving something intimate that only someone standing very close would recognize as present.
Cultural impact
David's Perfume #02 sits in an unusual position. It is a celebrity fragrance that takes a different approach to scent and ceremony. The powdery sandalwood-amber drydown gives it a refined, understated quality that feels less about performance and more about personal expression. It doesn't announce itself as loudly as some might expect from a celebrity fragrance. Rather, it offers a different philosophy, one built around intimacy rather than announcement.
