The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
There's a particular smell to a public pool in late June. Chlorine sharp enough to sting your sinuses, sunscreen half-applied, a fruit cup sweating on a plastic lounger. Strawberries By The Poolside doesn't romanticize that afternoon, it bottles it. Launched in 2024, the fragrance was composed by Mahsam Raza as part of The Dua Brand's Inspired Expression line, a collection built around interpretations of scent profiles and themes from across the fragrance world. The brief was simple and unapologetic: capture the full sensory stack of a poolside afternoon, from the first bite of strawberry to the chemical tang of treated water, without sanding off any of the edges.
The unusual move here is the chlorine accord. Raza commits to it fully, pairing the chlorinated water with ginger and pink pepper for a clean, almost metallic heat. The effect is a little disorienting, which is the point. Strawberry fragrances tend to lean gourmand or candy-sweet. This one pulls the fruit toward something wilder by surrounding it with water that smells treated and spice that smells alive. The combination keeps the composition from collapsing into simple fruitiness.
The evolution
Ginger stings at the opening, pink pepper prickles alongside it, and the strawberry reads more like the crushed fruit at the bottom of a plastic cup than anything from a confectioner's shelf. The effect is immediate, almost a little confrontational, and unapologetic about it. The chlorine arrives early in the wear and it doesn't politely recede. It threads through the heart, mixing with the fruit and spice until the whole thing smells like someone left a fruit salad next to a pool pump. The spice and water notes wrestle for attention, and the strawberry sits between them, sometimes jammy and sweet, sometimes sharper and more like fruit that's been sitting out in the heat. As the composition moves into its later stages, it begins to settle.
Cultural impact
Strawberries By The Poolside arrived in 2024 and made a specific kind of argument. The chlorine accord, usually avoided or buried in aquatic compositions, sits front and center here, and the fragrance doesn't apologize for it. The opening reads almost briny, with the treated-water note doing as much work as the strawberry itself in establishing the scent's character. The fruit is ripe, almost jammy, and the ginger and pink pepper give the composition a heat that keeps the sweetness from settling into anything too soft or familiar.
