The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Pride arrived in 2025 as part of Proad's Seven Sins Collection, the Thai house that translates human nature into scent. Dominique Ropion built this one on a provocation: the sin of pride reimagined as something stripped of performance. The wearer's honest reckoning with desire and shadow, translated into olfactory language. The composition opens with crisp citrus and cool spices that catch attention, then deepens into a rich heart of florals and resins that linger on the skin. There's a quiet confidence to how it evolves over hours, revealing new facets without ever announcing itself. In Proad's framework, Pride belongs to whoever walks into a room having already done the work.
What makes Pride structurally interesting is the tension between its opening and its heart. The top delivers expected warmth, black pepper, cardamom, boozy raspberry, before the davana and ink accord pulls the composition somewhere darker, more cerebral. Turkish rose doesn't bloom here. It stains. That's the move. Ropion isn't interested in pleasant rose; he wants the kind that leaves a mark on white linen and refuses to wash out.
The evolution
The opening hits immediately: black pepper and cardamom crack sharp, then raspberry liqueur slides in with something almost confectionary. That sweetness doesn't last. Within the first hour, davana and Turkish rose arrive carrying an inky weight, the smell of old love letters, typewriter keys, things left unsaid. The heart holds for two, maybe three hours before tobacco and vetiver take over, dry and slightly smoky, oak wood providing structure underneath. The drydown lingers close to skin, intimate rather than announced. On fabric, it's there the next morning.
Cultural impact
Pride sits at the collection's more cerebral end: not aggressive, but uncompromising. The composition speaks to a growing audience of fragrance enthusiasts who seek out work that challenges rather than soothes. Ropion's background shows in the structural confidence of the blend, where each layer has room to breathe without crowding the next. It's a fragrance that asks something of the wearer, reward coming from attention rather than passive appreciation. The Seven Sins framework gives each release a conceptual anchor while leaving plenty of room for personal interpretation.
