The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
He Wood came from wanting something raw. The Caten brothers, Dean and Dan, had spent years building DSQUARED² as a fashion label that refused easy categories: street culture meets Italian tailoring, Toronto roots meeting Milan opportunity. By 2007, the brand had enough momentum to translate that dual identity into scent. They wanted a fragrance that felt like stepping outside, not a single direction, but the feeling of open air. Daphné Bugey built He Wood around that premise: a woody aromatic that opens green and settles into something warmer, something that breathes. Violet leaf at the top, cedar and vetiver at the heart, then the fir and musk base anchoring the whole composition. It became the first in a collection that the brand would expand over the following years, each fragrance built on the same foundation: woods as a language, not just a note.
The violet leaf opening is what makes this distinctive, it's green in a way that feels immediate, almost sharp, but it doesn't sting. It just announces. Then the cedar arrives not as a replacement but as a deepening, and the vetiver adds this earthiness that keeps everything grounded. The balsam fir in the base is what separates this from other woody fragrances, it's not just dry wood, it's something with a slight resinous quality, a memory of forests rather than lumber yards. Musk rounds it out, keeping the drydown close to skin rather than projecting outward. The whole composition has this quality of restraint that feels intentional rather than limited.
The evolution
First spray: violet leaf, bright and clean. There's something almost aquatic in the way it opens, not oceanic, but the smell of air before rain. The top notes don't vanish so much as integrate, moving into the cedar and vetiver heart where the fragrance finds its main character. Cedar dominates here, dry and slightly sweet, with vetiver adding a mossy counterweight that keeps it from feeling too polished. The drydown brings the musk forward, soft, clean, and the balsam fir's subtle resinous quality. On skin, it settles and holds for 6-8 hours, becoming something intimate rather than projecting. The next day, there's still a trace, faint cedar on skin, the memory of something worn.
Cultural impact
He Wood established the template for DSQUARED²'s fragrance collection, woods as a language, restraint as a philosophy. The 2007 launch marked the brand's extension beyond fashion into scent, bringing the twins' transatlantic sensibility into a medium that didn't need translation. The collection that followed built on this foundation, each fragrance exploring a different facet of the same woody territory without ever diluting the original concept.
