Pandan D. Grayi

this is a vanilla waffle cone with some pandan ice cream on top!
i don't really find it to be bready, which is probably for the better so that the pandan really shines through!

it is a bit more vanilla, but it still has that green grassiness that pandan normally has, through help from the pine.

this is not overly sweet as some claim; it's great for daily wear. it won't be cloying at all and can be worn throughout all seasons.

i would like to mention this is an EDT, so longevity and sillage is sadly a bit weak because of the concentration.

i've seen some people say it smells like l'eau papier from diptyque, but i personally don't get that. l'eau is far nuttier and ricey than this; pandan is its own specific plant, fragrance, and flavor. also, coconutty.

I'm so glad I finally got a sample of this. I've been finding to find a Vietnamese perfume house, and this one is unexpected, but great.

If Sweet Celestials is photo-realistic pandan, this is pandan extract put into a form that Western noses can also appreciate as a gourmand.

For those unfamiliar, pandan itself has a sweet, green scent to it that lingers on top of a core of coconut and vanilla. Depending on the freshness, it can be aromatic, fresh and light, or creamy and gourmand. Its extract, while similar, reads more like coconut milk with fat and vanilla extract.

The scent opens quite bready to me, with the coconut milk adding a fattiness to the scent. It smells like a bakery to me, and a familiar one at that. If you know the smell of milk bread, it's that and coconut, with a pandan extract in the back that lingers but is yet to introduce herself.

By the time you get to the heart, you get such an adorably sweet introduction to the pandan proper. Vanilla's in the back to help boost pandan's sweetness, but does make the scent smell more like an extract, rather than the actual leaf. I find the illusion of extract is also played up by the usage of a delicious waffle accord, with sandalwood adding warmth and pine resin giving the smell a touch of something different so the smell is somewhat artificial. It's photorealistic in the sense where pandan extract smells like this, but pandan extract does not smell like fresh pandan.

Does that make sense? It smells like it was used to flavor a baked good.

I do have to note this, but I think d.grayi choosing bread is such a great choice. I usually see pandan applied to traditional Asian desserts, and those scents being labelled as exotic. It's always been a curious thing to watch, since to me, some of these smells make my mouth water, yet they get labelled as sunscreen. I'm very happy that this fragrance exists because of that!

Western enthusiasts know what bread and sweet breads are. To me, it's an incredibly smart way to introduce the West to such a yummy scent and to make people understand how this is a gourmand.

I'm not sure when to wear this, to be honest! It'd be odd during the colder months to wear this where I am, but I don't care and I'm also odd, so I'm tempted to cop a bottle when I can for that. To me, this a year-rounder since it's not too sweet, and it's signature scent-worthy. However, I see many say this perfume runs savory on them. Be sure to sample it first and to see if this is your level of sweet! I think this is going to be a difficult one to layer, unless you have a pure-sugar perfume or something.

Overall, a fun take on pandan! A delicious bakery scent of milk breads, pandan, coconut milk, and vanilla. Universally recognizeable as a gourmand, but notable enough to make people question what exactly is flavoring the bread. Lightly sweet, may not be sweet enough for others, but I think this is a great one.

On skin, this is an immediate burst of bread, some Pandan and a light sweetness. The middle of the journey is more-so light bread, pine, and musk, and the base for me is Pandan leaves covering pine cones. On clothes I get immediate bread and Pandan and it dries down to just bread. It’s lovely but you need to love bread :).

i get a little bit of the pandan and sweetness in the beginning but it quickly fades into a salty yummy photorealistic bread scent. i honestly wouldn’t recommend this if you’re looking for a pandan scent because it’s just so fleeting, like probably just lasts 10 minutes, but highly would recommend if you want to smell like a bakery.

Pandan smells like a sweet green flower to me even though it’s actually a fragrant tropical leaf. If you’ve never smelled pandan before, that’s the closest way I can describe it. Green, softly floral and naturally sweet. Vanilla comes in behind it, followed by just a touch of coconut. Then something soft and starchy starts to appear. The listed notes include bread and vanilla waffle, but that isn’t what I smell. There’s no butter, toasted bread, browned waffle, almond or custard. To me it smells like pale, slightly sweet dough. It gives the fragrance a soft cozy warmth without turning it into a sugary gourmand. As it dries, sandalwood settles underneath everything. This isn’t a loud or overly sweet pandan. It’s quiet and incredibly cozy. Sweet green pandan, soft vanilla, a little coconut, starchy dough and creamy sandalwood. My skin chemistry had other plans. The pandan became grassier for a short time and then my skin gobbled up most of the interesting parts and left me with a sweet sandalwood. It wasn’t bad, just much more basic than what I smelled on paper.