Alan Bray
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Pink pepper provides less a kick than a fizzing lift, champagne bubbles dissipating into lychee's rose-tinged flesh. The peony arrives cool and slightly soapy, its greenness tempering the fruit before sweetness can take hold.
White peony fully blooms here, that characteristic clean-laundry quality merging with lychee in a way that recalls expensive hand cream or the particular smell of boutique tissue paper. The florality dominates but never suffocates, held in check by an emerging woody dryness.
Musk and amber create a second-skin warmth that's more 'expensive cashmere' than 'golden goddess'. The white cedar asserts itself quietly, adding a papery, almost austere quality that prevents the base from becoming too cosy, whilst something indefinably odd—that 'infestation' perhaps—keeps you returning to your wrist.
Louise Turner's D'Or unfolds as a peculiar tension between delicate florals and something faintly unsettling lurking beneath. The opening snap of pink pepper gives way almost immediately to a lychee-peony coupling that shouldn't work as well as it does—the peony's soapy, slightly metallic freshness cuts through lychee's typical cloying sweetness, creating something genuinely translucent rather than simply 'light'. This is white floral territory for those who've grown weary of indolic opulence; there's an airiness here, a deliberate restraint that reads almost Japanese in its composition.
What makes D'Or compelling is its refusal to commit fully to prettiness. The base introduces white cedar's pencil-shaving dryness alongside musk and amber, creating a skin-like warmth that feels lived-in rather than polished. That listed 'infestation' note (whether intentional or a peculiar data error) somehow feels apt—there's something quietly invasive about how this fragrance settles into fabric and hair, a persistent whisper that won't quite leave. The creamy accord manifests not as vanilla or sandalwood but as that specific texture when fruity notes begin to oxidise and soften into something rounder, almost fatty.
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3.5/5 (76)