Annick Goutal Rose Absolue

This is the purest, most beautiful rose fragrance I have ever found-and I have tried the best out there. It's fresh, natural, and heartbreakingly beautiful. An absolute treasure, a true masterpiece. I will never be without it. Worth every penny.

Goes on a lovely, simple rose scent, moist with dew, then it dries down super over-sweet and fades away completely. Disappointing.

Great rose, but definitely some soapiness in it. Otherwise, it would have had a four.

Ah, I wanted to like this, because I really like rose-perfumes. But - I just don't like this one. Again this one sounds so very nice in the description, so many roses, but on my skin it was just too heavy, too sweet and after some minutes it smelled more like the water that is left in the vase after some days, when the roses started to wither.

Turned sour on me immediately.

As roses (rose-hater writing) go, this is one of the prettiest and best quality. A slightly powdery accord softens the fragrance. My second favorite rose (after L'Artisan's Drole de Rose).

It is a rose, or, more precisely, six types of rose (Egyptian, Bulgarian, Damask, Turkish, May, Moroccan). The six combine into one, with no flickering or staining of other notes (and what can be done to rose is legion). Goutal's version is that day when a rose comes perfectly to bloom, almost.



Rose Absolute is a soliflore that seems embellished only by some hitherto unsuspected qualities of the flower, which makes Goutal's opus alternately clean as the lather of white soap and creamy as the top of old-fashioned milk. This latter tendency gives Rose Absolute the roundness of a Rubens. It's a gently swelling rose that requires study to understand that the six varieties of rose must have their distinctions the way a painter must have his brushstrokes. It's rather meticulously done and perfected with no sloppy edges or amateur scrawl.



The best part is the beginning. This soliflore is not the same at top as at bottom; the top is where the rose is as clear and bright and balanced as the flower on the bush. It is only in the center where the roses begin to coagulate and take on a distant sourness, as if clabbered. What causes this I cannot say; one or more of these roses must have this peculiarity that softens and spoils in turn. Since it seems the roses are introduced as one, rather than in turn, there is no gap in introduction where one might identify the culprit. The creaminess is too rich for my tastes, yet this is what is responsible for describing RA as "velvety."



Rose Absolute is not virginal but womanly, and more specifically maternal. As it matures, it becomes hazier in contour, rippling outwards in a soft drapery. It may be too much for some at this point, since it goes without further development.



I prefer the topknot of fresh white rose sensed at the top to the extensive folds of red rose in the center. Although the fragrance is quiet on me, there is a richness that makes it difficult for me to wear, a lack of air and space. It makes me feel somewhat claustrophobic even as it must be classified as important in the rose catalogue. It's just that it makes me feel as if I am about to be expelled from Paradise. continued >>

At first, I thought it was quite nice, smelled like a real, fresh, dewy, red rose. About 5 or 10 minutes into the fragrance, it was so high-pitched I honestly wanted to wash it off. It felt headache-inducing, it made my head throb, like being stuck in a car with someone singing a high note too loud, for too long. The mid-notes feel like the top notes drying down-- there's nothing else added but rose, rose and more rose.
Although it is a nice rose, I give it that, it didn't wear well on me, is much too high-pitched, and it doesn't fit my personality or what I want to ideally smell like. It conjures up no connotations or allusions to anything else in my life, takes me nowhere, and I am left smelling this rose that is a bit soapy? perhaps, it just is not complex at all. It is innocent, fresh, and one-layered; another headache-inducing rose soliflore for me. =(
EDIT: As heady and too high-pitched as it was in the beginning, it completely wore off with no trace in 4 hours.. so at least that!!

I love it. I became addicted to her body cream, and I think she does rose so exquisitely. This is not the sexiest perfume I have ever worn, but it's beautiful, fresh, feminine. I feel clean when I wear it. I now layer it with her body splash - I would wear it over the body cream, but I can't justify the cost at all times. So I do the body splash, and a rose body cream by l'occitane topped by a few spritzes of rose absolue. It does not fail to win compliments!

Smells like the rose mix I made as a child by stirring petals in water , raw and un-refined.