Gucci Guilty Absolute pour Femme 
Gucci (2018)

A year ago I tried it in the shop without huge expectations (as I had several peel off testers of original Guilty and it was merely okay for me) and surprisingly really enjoyed the huge and slightly sour blackberry note sitting in the deep woods. I asked for a tester vial, depleted it, asked for more and after I depleted that, I knew that this reluctant trying out at the shop was actually a beginning of a beautiful friendship. Or should I call it addiction?

It's primarily berries and woods to me, but I was pleasantly surprised when sometime around my 4th wear I noticed that the leather note is actually quite prominent and very beautiful. The deep, dark rose here isn't big, it's quite subtle on my skin, and it complements the berries nicely. I do love being in a cloud of this unsweet and a bit calming scent. It feels elegant, but not the stuck up kind of elegant, it's more youthful and cozy and a bit carefree kind of elegant to me, very fitting for a rock concert as well.

Even though the blackberry and the deep calming woods are the most prominent things in this beauty, I think it could be classified as a rose-patchouli scent, as it does feel a bit like a kin to its successors and predecessors Juliette Has a Gun's Lady Vengeance & Mad Madame, Initio's Atomic Rose, Twilly d'Hermès Eau Poivrée, Malle's Portrait of a Lady and the like. They all have many differences, but share the sombre mood and deepness. Guilty Absolute pour Femme sticks out of the bunch with its fruity sourness, piney coldness of cypress and slight bitterness of leather in the deep drydown, making it almost a chypre-like scent (of course, in modern sense of the already dead style).

Although the scent IS rather linear and you can smell all its components from the top notes through the drydown, but it does slightly change through the course of the wear, giving all the components time to shine. At first it's the strong unsweet blackberry taking the lead, then gradually the woods, the rose and the leather show up. Together they form this sombre, deep, calm, intoxicating and slightly cooling scent. To me it gets more masculine as it dries down, and I'm guilty of loving it.

Remember what I've said about a beautiful friendship? It's more than that, it's grown into love. It's my scent for sure. I'll definitely, absolutely be getting backups of this.

Feminine rose done right.

Opens with the blackberry rose over woods. The rose comes forward in the heart. The longer it dries the more feminine it gets. It is distinctly "perfumey" later on. I really like how this smells, and if I was a female it would be in my rotation. As is, I will try to get my wife to like it, but all else failing, will just smell the atomizer in the store as I walk by. Good job here, Gucci.

I'm sad to admit that the first time I tested this, I was underwhelmed. I had been at Ulta for well over an hour, and looking back, I'm pretty sure that my nose was fatigued. At any rate, I wrote this off as boring berries, saddened that it did not live up to the Homme version that I love so much.

Fast forward a few months, and a kind fellow fragrance lover sent me a care package of decants: Bottega Veneta, Salvatore Ferragamo, Hermès, and buried under the rest, Gucci Guilty Absolute pour Femme. I spritzed it on as an afterthought, and then I stopped in my tracks.

This is the kind of fragrance that takes your breath away. Instead of the muted berries I remembered from Ulta, I experienced the needle-sharp, monsterous cypress note that endeared me to pour Homme (even more than the famous gasoline/leather accord). Right behind the roaring cypress came mouth-puckeringly sour berries alongside a big, fat rose that's at once nice and jammy but also somehow ice cold. Farther in the dry-down, there is the faintest hint of leather, more akin to TF's Ombre Leather than to GGA pour Homme, but pleasant and still a fitting homage to the masculine.

I'm going to hop off the train for a moment to say that the longevity isn't great, about 4-6 hours on me if I'm lucky and a skin scent after 2 hours (I have dry skin that eats scent, so take that for what it's worth). I definitely have to carry my decant with me to freshen up during the day, but the opening is so gorgeous that I'd probably respray several times a day regardless.

There are so many things to love here (just look at Redneck Perfumisto's review! So many words in prose from our resident poet!), but the clencher for me is that cypress. Evergreens are a weak spot for me, and this is one of the most beautiful evergreen scents I've had the pleasure of wearing. Backup bottle-worthy x10 for me.

Gucci Guilty Absolute Pour Femme is a refreshing departure and nice complement to the fittingly more masculine leather-and-patchouli Pour Homme released last year. Femme involves a blend of blackberry, rose, woods, and patchouli primarily, the blackberry starting off strong and heady but remaining a part of the mix throughout the life of the fragrance, blending excellently with the heart of rose and eventually a more relaxed base of patchouli, leather, and goldenwood. I don't get much of the leather, or the vetiver in the heart, for that matte, as it's mainly the blackberry and rose that are doing the heavy lifting, at least on my skin.

Certainly marketed for women with the floral/fruity dominance, I nevertheless regard it as unisex, especially for men like me that are fans of rose.

Its performance is great, well above average, and Femme, like Homme, is widely available on the secondary market, despite having scaled-up pricing from Homme (Guilty Oud's pricing is higher still), and Femme can generally be found in the $50-$80 range for its standard 90ml size (the largest, unlike Homme, which comes in 150ml as well).

Definitely a recommended try for men and women alike, not to be blind bought but certainly to be backed up if loved as I love it.

8 out of 10

Diesel-berry rose
Mauve paths fore and aft in time
Dreams outside this box.

My extensive first impression review is here:

http://www.basenotes.net/threads/447838-NEW-Gucci-Gucci-Guilty-Absolute-Pour-Femme-For-Women!?p=4278907&viewfull=1#post4278907

Selected parts:

This stuff is absolutely (expletive deleted) beautiful. It is wildly exceeding even my already high expectations.

...

There is enormous relationship to the men's. I thought that would be too difficult - that they couldn't connect to that raw leathery quality of the men's Absolute that appeals to men, and still make something that could appeal to women and be feminine, but I was wrong. This is feminine, but the homage to the men's is so strong, and the rose is so perfect and rich - improved by the berry - that men will absolutely want to steal it. Male fans of strong niche rose scents will be sorely tempted!!! It's more feminine than most of those scents, but not in a scary way.

As for women, I would say that women who wanted their own Egoiste have it now, except this is not a Chanel - it's its own style - old Gucci.

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It's all very rich and self-supporting. The components improve each other - they don't fight each other. That first sniff - it was like it just got better and better and I was going WTF!!! The patchouli and rose are perfect together. The berry is just restrained enough that it can have its full power and prominence while not being so typically excessive. The berry makes the rose much more interesting. The oily, leathery character of the men's shows through underneath the rose and the berry, making both appealing in a way which is hard to describe - mature yet young. A great balance between new and old makes it smell exactly like the visual marketing. Perhaps I sense a bit more leather, but I'm looking for it!

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Wow - there is a point about 10 or 15 seconds into this, where it just amazing. It's very rich, complex and "golden". Reminiscent of the magic moment when POAL is getting started. But now as it sits on my skin, the dark patchouli and woody notes and amber show through the rose and berry and the whole thing is very symphonic. Most important are the parts that reflect the men's fragrance. Woody, leathery, oily - the interesting stuff that makes women want to poach Fahrenheit is there to make MEN want to poach this one.

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I should mention that it is NOT unfaithful to the Guilty line - it definitely follows the original women's scent, which was the best of the bunch, IMO, until now. But this is daring to go in some new directions. Comparisons to some of the best niche rose fragrances from the TOP houses are not unwarranted. This is a definite match for the men's. A very conscious and precise one.

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Will it make me dream? No question! This colors my thoughts already! It's a powerful fashion statement.