Pandan

Warm, buttery notes of toasted grain meet creamy coconut in an opening that feels like biting into a freshly baked pastry—indulgent yet surprisingly light.

As it settles, pandan tincture unfolds in pale green, softly floral waves over sandalwood, turning the familiar dessert note into something a bit grassy, nutty, and almost vanilla-adjacent without ever feeling artificial. In the drydown, pine resin and a vanilla waffle accord add a drier, toasty sweetness that suggests crisp waffle edges rather than gooey cake, keeping the whole experience lush, creamy, and snack-like but still wearable outside the kitchen.

If you love pandan desserts, coconut wafers, and gentle green gourmands, this is an easy choice for days when you want to smell like comfort food in a soft, grown-up way.

• James Nguyen

d.grayi is the work of James Nguyen, known also as Miju, a perfumer who came to scent as an adversary rather than a calling. A career spent around hair color and its chemicals left James allergic. Fragrance meant headaches and a throat swelling shut, and anything scented was avoided outright. Cosmetic chemistry, taken up as a hobby, brought the first turn: cosmetic raw materials that smelled unpleasant, and natural ingredients found to soften them.

Then came a dream, in which someone deeply important who had passed away returned and described a fragrance. It was not a scent so much as a complete story, vivid and pictured, and James woke and wrote down every detail. The quest to recreate it became the studio. Isolated aroma molecules, tried later, provoked nothing; the allergy had been to composition, not to any one material. James now builds olfactive stories unrestricted.