Growing up, I was a mooncake connoisseur. Mid-Autumn Festival recounts fond memories of lining up to collect tins and tins of mooncakes that I would then indulge in for weeks on end. Take it from someone who once ate two of these rich, scrumptious delights as dinners for an entire week—Mooncake is brilliant. 

Mooncake, released by D’annam as part of their Majestic China collection, is described as “a scent of sweet nostalgia—a warm, golden crust giving way to a luscious center of salted egg yolk”. Although I was only able to procure a 2 mL decant for this review, the full, 50 mL egg-shaped bottle is sleek, minimalistic and features the word ‘Mooncake’ written alongside its Chinese translation. Interestingly, the perfume itself is a golden yellow, which might be of concern to wearers who prefer to spray on fabric.

On their website, D’annam calls out notes of golden syrup, honey, lotus seed, mung bean, salted egg yolk and vanilla—all classic components of a traditional Chinese mooncake. 

On initial spray, Mooncake is intense. You immediately get the mung bean and salted egg yolk, with a slight breadiness underneath. There’s a slight sweetness from the honey that I found a bit cloying at first, but it definitely eased out over wear. Going in, I expected straight dessert, but was pleasantly surprised with the lack of photorealism. Mooncake presents itself as more of a rich, complex, interpretation of the pastry, which makes it more wearable in day-to-day life. Additionally, Mooncake is much more savory than most other players in the gourmand space, earning itself the highest textbook compliment of Asian dessert—not too sweet! However, in the dry down, the savory notes faded, giving way to a sweet, comforting pastry scent. For me, the fragrance lasted around 8 hours with light projection and moderate intensity. 

The online discourse around perfume typically centers around one metric: compliments. When I first entered the world of fragrance, my social media feed was littered with influencers recommending the products that got them the most attention, gathered them the most compliments, and attracted them the most romantic prospects. As such, companies are terrified to offend—they chase mass appeal, dilute artistic vision to its most vapid concept, and we see 20 releases of the same iterations of vanilla and white floral every year.

Mooncake steps away from the crowd. Smelling like salted egg yolk or mung bean might not be for everyone. But for those of us who cherish mooncake season and everything that comes with it, Mooncake reminds us that fragrance is an experience and an art. 

Perfume should do more than appease others; in fact, external approval should be the least of its concerns. As we’ve seen in fashion, makeup, hair, and so many other similar spaces, this release helps shift the conversation around fragrance—and beauty as a whole—towards self-expression rather than societal validation. Mooncake by D’annam is more than delicious. It challenges the means by which we evaluate fragrance and introduces scent as a new frontier of cultural celebration, and for that, is well worth your whiff.

On this blog, members of the Carmel High School chapter of the Quill and Scroll International Honorary Society for High School Journalists (and the occasional guest writer) produce curations of all facets of popular culture, from TV shows to music to novels to technology. We hope our readers always leave with something new to muse over. Click here to read more from MUSE.