Havana Gold Dries Van Noten 2025

The night is warm and heavy, the rain has polished the streets to a shine. A bar at the end of the alley, voices like muted trumpets, tobacco smoke hangs in the air. Those who enter here leave reality behind. And just like that, Havana Gold opens up: unobtrusive, embracing, like a promise in the half-light.

In the background, Steely Dan shimmers: from Doctor Wu comes the line "Biscayne Bay, where the Cuban gentlemen sleep all day." But we are not in Cuba ... it is an imagined retreat, a dream that exists only in thought. Havana Gold captures this floating sensation: a subtle hint of heat, tobacco, and old wood, seen through a tinted glass, never directly, always as a reflection.

One might think the streetlights cast their golden light on the wet pavement, while a soft groove pulses in the background. Voices blend with saxophone runs that do not push but caress. Everything has a touch of wickedness; a shimmer in the shadows, a warmth that is barely spoken, and the suggestion of a night that promises more than it can deliver.

Havana Gold is not a longing perfume, but an escape scent. A brief, subtle break from everyday life, like a secret side window into another world. It carries the elegance of distance within it, the hint of a freedom that one never fully possesses, but feels for a moment. Each breath brushes like a fleeting kiss, a warm shadow on the skin that cuddles without demanding.

Those who wear it do not really travel away. But sometimes, it is enough to inhale this scent to let time flow more slowly. Havana Gold thus becomes a small, fleeting feast for the senses: sensual, elegant, mysterious. And like a Steely Dan song that lingers in the mind long after the music has faded.