According to the lore of her eponymous fragrance house, Annick Goutal was deeply fond of roses; as one of the company websites states, “Every moment of her life was filled with them as she believed in their sensorial properties and their beneficial powers on the skin. She added drops of rose essence to her bathwater, drank it in secret teas…” Over the years, Goutal has released spicy fragrances, woody fragrances, green fragrances, and all sorts of florals, but it also continues to offer several variations on rose. Here are my thoughts on four of them…

Rose Absolue is an early Goutal fragrance, released in 1984. It was difficult to find for a while — in the United States, at least — but now it seems to be more widely available. Annick Goutal said of Rose Absolue, “Roses symbolize beauty, the eternal feminine. I wanted to dedicate a perfume to them which would also evoke this femininity.” This fragrance is all rose: it contains essences of May rose, Turkish rose, Bulgarian rose, Damascus rose, Egyptian rose, and Moroccan rose. Rose Absolue is both delicate and radiant. Like a gradually opening rose, it shifts from dewy to velvety to slightly dusky. If someone asked me to recommend just a few high-quality rose soliflores, this would be on my list…

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