Escada
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The raspberry hits first with an almost jam-like intensity, backed by pink pepper's gentle bite that lasts approximately thirty seconds before capitulating to the rose water's creamy insistence. You're left standing in what smells like a luxury brand's body lotion counter—sweet, slightly alcoholic, and entirely predictable.
A rose macaron note attempts to lend sophistication but arrives too sweet, already muddled with the hawthorn and jasmine into an abstract floral pudding. The powdery accords intensify here, creating a dry, almost chalky sensation despite the fragrance's obvious sweetness—a contradictory effect that undermines rather than intrigues.
What remains is primarily vanilla and musk rendered so diffuse and powdery that distinguishing individual notes becomes impossible. The fragrance fades into skin scent territory far earlier than one might expect, leaving behind the ghost of cosmetics rather than any substantive aromatic memory.
Escada's Absolutely Me arrives as a distinctly saccharine proposition—one that doesn't pretend at complexity but rather celebrates its own confectionery nature. Sonia Constant has constructed something closer to a gourmand than a true floral, despite the rose macaron and jasmine listed prominently in the heart. The raspberry and pink pepper opening immediately establishes a candied sensibility; this isn't the tart snap of real berries but rather their syrupy reduction, softened further by rose water that reads almost creamy rather than dewy. What emerges is a fragrance caught between departments—neither fully dessert nor fully flower shop, but rather a department store cosmetics counter on a humid afternoon, all powder and pink packaging.
The vanilla base, inevitably the fragrance's anchor, transforms everything above it into something powdery and diffuse. The hawthorn, a note with genuine possibility for gentle greenery, dissolves into the sweet morass rather than providing counterpoint. This is unisex only in the gentlest sense—it's a scent that wears soft and decidedly feminine, despite its theoretical classification. It suits someone who reaches for comfort over complexity, who enjoys wearing something as familiar and unchallenging as the scent of their own skin after applying a drugstore body powder. The 2010 vintage carries that era's particular obsession with synthetic warmth and almond-tinged sweetness—markers of its time that have aged into something slightly dated rather than retro.
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3.3/5 (83)