Gold (2006)
by Donna Karan

Lily. Lightly spiced lily. So smooth and substantial even for an EdT. It's like the best parts about a flower shop and an herb garden. It's slightly creamy, and definitely is a perfume but it's a great scent.

A lily fragrance that doesn’t respond well to my skin. The Casablanca lily, which smells enchanting on paper and on cloth, goes dusty, musty when it hits my skin – perhaps because of the spices. This staleness is not the normal experience I had with this flower. Because the lily is so prominent, there is no saving the fragrance for me – not even the jasmine or the “gold” build accords that can make up for the unattractive musty note that comes with the lily. The lily stays with the fragrance through the drydown, which doesn’t last long because I wash it off…

As photorealistic rendering of the ‘Casa Blanca’ oriental lily, Donna Karan Gold stands right beside Serge Lutens’s Un Lys and Frederic Malle’s Lys Mediterranée as one of the finest lily soliflores. It’s the sweetest of the three, and to my nose the softest in profile (not volume!) and the least indolic. Donna Karan Gold is neither so heady as Un Lys nor as crisp and green as Lys Mediterranée, and hence may also be the most versatile and generally wearable of the lot. Its lily heart is complemented by the merest touch of vanilla, some gentle spices, and a foundation of clean musk and soft woods. While its overall texture is smooth and creamy, Donna Karan Gold is not a soft-spoken fragrance. On the contrary, it will project several feet from your skin and leave a cloud of potent sillage hanging behind you. You’ll always know you’re wearing it, but that’s not such a bad thing, given that it’s one of the best designer florals you can buy. Lovely.

Gold is like a pure white lily scent to me, not the fake or heavy lily in past perfumes. It's deep and alluring. I keep in mind that everyone's chemistry is different, but if you have only smelled it from the bottle or on paper, you haven't really tested it at all. I don't trust the opinions of those who pass on a fragrance so quickly. There is also pollen in the notes... which I think adds to the real scent of a lily, at it's center. The balsam a sweet wood sap, it's liquid and warm like the amber. This is not the same dark amber that's common. It does not overwhelm the base, and I am grateful the patchouli is the same way. The lily and amber are allowed to shine, the rest of the notes simply enhance the perfume and allow it to unfold. There are plenty of perfumes that go onto skin alive and then just fall into nothingness, but Gold stays true for me.

Very true lily scent; like wearing a big bouquet of stargazers. I get the watery cucumber that some have mentioned mid-way thru the drydown, but later it snaps back to being a fully bloomed lily scent. In the end, these lush lilies aren't my thing, even in cool weather, but for those who do dig lily, it's a very good one.

I've read that the edt and edp formulations of DK Gold are different. The edt supposedly has the cucumber impression and is lighter (I haven't tried it so can't confirm or dispute this), and the edp is more ambery/spicy in the drydown. I bought DK Gold in edp in 2008, and I think it is a gorgeous fragrance. I get a lot of acacia in this as well as lily. It smells heavily of what we called mimosa (silk tree, a type of acacia) down in Mississippi when I was a girl - pink silky blossoms that have a very honey-sweet and haunting scent, especially on a summer night. So I like this for its personal associations, and also because I think it smells luxe, rich, and unusual. Patchouli is listed in the notes (, but I don't detect it. And I do get a golden impression. Like Nukapai, I also prefer this one to Lys Mediterranee. I think it's brilliant.