The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Pomelo is a name that means one thing to most people: the fruit. Big, heavy, pithy, less sweet than its grapefruit cousins. That's the angle Proad took in 2025 when Christian Carbonnel, known in niche circles as Chris Maurice, composed this entry for the brand's Classic Collection. The composition leans into the fruit's rougher edges, the tartness, the bite, the part you taste after the first sugary impression fades. Three citrus notes open the fragrance: grapefruit, bergamot, and honey pomelo, all of which read as sharp and immediate on the first spray. The tartness isn't dressed up with sugar or vanillin. It just sits there, doing what pomelo actually does when you cut one open and the juice runs down your wrist.
What's quietly clever about the pyramid is the middle stretch. Magnolia and rhubarb together is unusual. Magnolia brings a creamy, almost banana-like sweetness that softens edges. Rhubarb brings green sourness and a vegetal tartness you don't get from berries or citrus alone. Pair them and you get a heart that pushes back against the opening's brightness instead of just cushioning it. The rhubarb is doing the heavy lifting, it bridges the citrus above and the guaiac-incense below, acting like a hinge between two rooms that shouldn't connect. Most citrus fragrances skip straight from peel to woods and lose the middle. Proad built something more interesting in the gap.
The evolution
The opening reads grapefruit and bergamot, sharp enough to make you blink. There's an almost mineral brightness to it, the kind you get when you cut into pomelo and the juice hits a surface. The honey pomelo note sits underneath, slightly rounder, pulling back the acidity just enough to keep it from reading soapy. Then magnolia arrives, and the composition shifts. The sour green of rhubarb weaves in alongside the cream of magnolia, and suddenly the heart is doing something stranger than citrus. The two notes sit in an odd balance, the rhubarb cutting into the magnolia's softness, the magnolia rounding the rhubarb's sharp edges. It smells like the inside of a fruit market just before closing, when the ice melts and the produce gets soft. The guaiac wood and vetiver take over as the hours pass, grounded and a little smoky.
Cultural impact
Pomelo 2025 is built around a rhubarb and magnolia heart, a combination that gives the citrus top notes an unusual anchor. The sour green of rhubarb folds into the cream of magnolia, and the two together push the fragrance away from simple citrus territory and into something with more weight underneath. The guaiac wood and vetiver in the base add a dry, smoky character that most citrus compositions skip, and the incense sits faint enough to read as suggestion rather than statement. On skin, the citrus flashes first, then settles into the woody, resinous base as the hours pass, with amber and musk warming the drydown.
The House
ProadProad is a Thai fragrance house that interprets human nature through scent, drawing inspiration from the Roman Catholic concept of the seven deadly sins. The brand creates perfumes that explore themes of desire, memory, and emotional states, translating abstract concepts into wearable compositions. Proad has released multiple notable scents including Cherry Syrup (2019), Taipei (2021), Kyoto by Night (2021), and Pure Chemical No Natural (2022), with recent releases such as Lust and Let the whispers of Mojito calm your soul arriving in 2025. The house positions itself as a niche player in the fragrance market, producing fragrances in collaboration with perfumers and drawing from diverse sources including travel, music, poetry, and personal recollection.
The Creator
Christian CarbonnelCarbonnel is at his most distinctive when building rich, layered oriental compositions that unfold over hours on the skin. He favors high-quality natural materials and constructs fragrances with real depth—top notes that sparkle, heart notes that develop, and base notes that a…
