Delulu by .Oddity: My Grandmother's Kitchen, Bottled in Hong Kong

So photorealistic I could see the colors: deep ruby red to light pink, speckled, with that pale green you find on the stems.

The Encounter

There are fragrances that transport you somewhere imagined, a fantasy, a mood, an abstraction. And then there are the rare ones that transport you somewhere specific. A room you haven't thought about in years, a smell you didn't know you'd stored.

The first spritz of Delulu took me directly to my grandmother's kitchen. She was preparing her rhubarb jam, strawberry and rhubarb together, what the French call a compote, what the English call stewed fruit, what I call the most specific smell of a specific childhood afternoon I have ever encountered inside a fragrance bottle.

I stood there with the mouillette (scent strip) at my nose and went completely still.

Then I went back to it, and again. This is not always a sign that you love something... sometimes it is a sign that your nose is confused and refuses to let go until it understands. With Delulu, it was both.

The Pyramid

Nez = David Chieze

Top: Citron · Rhubarb · Bergamot · Mandarin

Heart: Strawberry · Blackcurrant · Bulgarian Rose · Raspberry · Olibanum

Base: Musk · Ambroxan · Osmanthus · Vetiver · Sandalwood

The Scent Journey

The opening is the event. David Chieze has done something technically remarkable here: he has made rhubarb smell like rhubarb. Not a rhubarb accord, not a fruity approximation, not a "inspired by" - the actual tart, tangy, photorealistic smell of a fresh stalk being cut and prepared. Citron and bergamot sharpen the top without softening it. Mandarin adds the faintest suggestion of sweetness, the way the sugar goes into the pot only after the rhubarb has already made its acidic intentions completely clear.

The colors I saw: deep ruby moving to light pink, then that pale celery green of the stems. A perfume that shows you its palette before you've finished reading the opening line.

Then...a twist! Olibanum arrives in the heart like an unexpected guest at a garden party, bringing a slightly smoky, resinous, artistic haze that shifts the whole composition sideways. This is the moment Delulu stops being a gourmand and becomes something stranger and more interesting. It is not polite neither "safe".

Bulgarian rose arrives next and does something essential: it lifts the composition. Where the rhubarb-strawberry-blackcurrant accord could have collapsed into jam territory, the rose introduces a quiet chic: a floral backbone that connects the garden fruit to something more refined. Raspberry adds a wink. The whole heart smells like a conserve that a very stylish person made on purpose.

The drydown is where Delulu fully earns its place on a shelf. The tartness dissolves while the Musk, ambroxan, vetiver, and sandalwood arrive and do exactly what a great base should do: round every sharp edge, smooth every acid note, and leave you with something clean, warm, and completely wearable. The osmanthus (apricot-adjacent, slightly leathery, quietly floral) is the bridge between the fruity heart and the woody-musky close. It is handled beautifully.

Longevity is impressive for a fragrance this fresh in character. The Sillage is joyful and present without demanding.

The Bottle

.Oddity is a Hong Kong-based niche house, and Delulu's bottle is a direct extension of its creative world. The caps are handmade by the .Oddity team: used toys and pink artefacts collected from the Hong Kong coastline, encapsulated in epoxy resin. Each cap is therefore unique like a small found-object sculpture sitting atop your fragrance.

It is completely committed to its own logic, and I respect that enormously.

The practice of collecting coastal objects and preserving them in resin has both an artistic and an environmental dimension that aligns with the fragrance's theme of nostalgic escapism and the fading colours of childhood, objects reclaimed from the tide. It is the kind of bottle that asks to be looked at before it is opened. And then asks to be looked at again.

The Lineage

.Oddity positions Delulu as "the escape hideout filled with memories and joys of fading youth, sunlight of idle days and never-ending romance." That brief is precise and they have delivered it exactly. Perfumer David Chieze has made a fragrance that smells like the specific emotional register of being young and unhurried, before the cynicism, before a routine, in a kitchen or a garden where time moved differently.

As a gourmand, it occupies unusual territory. It is not the vanilla-caramel warmth of mainstream comfort fragrances. It is not the polished fruit of a luxury house. It is genuinely odd and tart before sweet, smoky, and before soft. It's photorealistic before abstract. It belongs to a growing school of niche perfumery interested in hyper-specific sensory memory rather than aspirational mood.

For a 2025 launch from a young Hong Kong house, the ambition and execution are both considerable. And if there's something in Delulu's chaotic sweetness: that quality of being simultaneously deeply good-natured and completely unhinged with joy that feels connected to the animated universe Hong Kong gave the world... I think the .Oddity team would take that as a compliment. Consider it given.

The Verdict

Dimension	Score
Sillage	●●●●○
Longevity	●●●●○
Bottle Artistry	●●●●●
Olfactory Complexity	●●●●○
Personal Resonance	●●●○○

The personal resonance score reflects my own palette — not a criticism of the composition, which is genuinely accomplished. This is a fragrance I admire more than I would wear alone.

Delulu is a photorealistic rhubarb-strawberry jam that somehow also contains incense, rose, and a clean woody dry-down that makes complete sense by the time you reach it. It is curious, playful, nostalgic, and entirely itself. A spring and summer day scent that asks nothing of you except to stop, sniff your wrist, and go back in time for a moment. If you find it needs depth for your skin or season: layer it with a warm woody base, such as African Rooibos by Chris Collins and it transforms into something I would wear without hesitation. Main Accords: Fruity · Citrus · Green · Floral · Aromatic · Sweet · Musky Best For: Spring and summer days, weekend mornings, the kind of afternoon with nowhere urgent to be. T echnically unisex. Emotionally universal. Objectively odd — and that is entirely the point.

You can find it here.