Benzoin
Bergamot
Clove
Jasminum grandiflorum
Lily pollen
Mint
Orange blossom
Tonkin musk
Vanilla
Ylang-ylang06/13/2025
ClaireV
958 Reviews
ClaireV
1
Cinematic sweep of flowers
Quasi Un'Absurdia by Chris Rusak is a rare joy. In the modern hodge podge of brutal woody ambers and syrupy eau-de-department-store florals, instances of classical beauty are few and far between. So a minute of silence, please, for the feat that's been pulled off here by a small artisan.
I've no idea whether if it's innate talent - genius untrammeled by the stifling stays of the classical perfumery education corset - or the simple good luck of a five year-old who accidentally hammers out a Monet with a potato stamp, but I'll be damned if Chris Rusak, probably armed with nothing more than a small perfumer's organ of essences, hasn't created a glorious floral to rival that of giants such as Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue or Grossmiths' Shem el Nessim.
Quasi Un'Absurdia is a cinematic sweep of flowers that elates my spirits in the same way as the first swell of sound from the orchestra pit. I experience the opening as a rush of colors and texture - the purple velvet of jasmine, the buttery yellow of ylang against the polleny green-yellow of narcissus, and the greenery of lily stalks. In the roar of color and sound, I swear I smell the aromatic crushed bud of French lavender, but this may just be the civet punching its way through the floral mass and drawing a phantom Jicky-lite shape in the air.
The polleny narcissus aroma splits the difference between the eyelid-droopingly indolic, over-stuffed scent of a room filled with the flowers and the tartness of freshly-cut daffodil stems plunged into water. I find the rich, true smell of the jasmine and rose absolutes used here to be intoxicating in the way only the real flowers can be. This perfume makes me feel like I'm Dorothy, walking through that field of poppies, drugged up to my eyeballs on their narcotizing scent.
The gasoline beauty of pure jasmine absolute alone would have made this an easy sell for me, even if Chris Rusak hadn't been clever enough to underline its Sambac-like quality with the pleasantly watery bitterness of mint or artemisia and its Grandiflorum-like qualities with a bubblegummy ylang. But he has, so there you go. The arrangement here - the complex juggling and trade-offs involved in keeping this great slew of natural floral absolutes afloat - is flawlessly executed. Especially impressive is the fact that the benzyl acetate facet of natural ylang and jasmine has not been allowed to dominate, thereby saving the composition from the grapey dopiness of the standard big white floral.
A bouquet this rich in white flowers risks heaviness. But thanks to the sharply woody civet and a lily tincture that leans more towards the crunchy green-and-white freshness of muguet than the funeral meatiness of lily, the overall impression remains remarkably crisp. Quasi Un'Absurdia is definitely not as lily-dominant to me as perfumes like Malle's Lys Méditerranée, but actually, there's a time and a place for the insistent salty, almost aquatic-tinged heavy cream of lilies, and this is not it. The 'lily-ness' of Quasi Un'Absurdia is perfectly dosed.
The drydown of Quasi Un'Absurdia will be an unmitigated pleasure-fest for anyone who loves the intricate yet cozy abstraction of the great Guerlain perfumes such as L'Heure Bleue or Chamade but doesn't adore the sometimes fussy powderiness of their finish. This perfume's Guerlainesque almond-custard denouement is streamlined by comparison, a product of cantilevering a huge bouquet of flowers over a sharp, airy base of woods, civet, and soapy musks. In fact, Quasi Un'Absurdia is the equivalent of a John Irving novel: it spins a cracking good yarn in the classical tradition of Alexandre Dumas but borrows the dreamily absurdist, abstract style of Gabriel García Márquez to tell it.
I've no idea whether if it's innate talent - genius untrammeled by the stifling stays of the classical perfumery education corset - or the simple good luck of a five year-old who accidentally hammers out a Monet with a potato stamp, but I'll be damned if Chris Rusak, probably armed with nothing more than a small perfumer's organ of essences, hasn't created a glorious floral to rival that of giants such as Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue or Grossmiths' Shem el Nessim.
Quasi Un'Absurdia is a cinematic sweep of flowers that elates my spirits in the same way as the first swell of sound from the orchestra pit. I experience the opening as a rush of colors and texture - the purple velvet of jasmine, the buttery yellow of ylang against the polleny green-yellow of narcissus, and the greenery of lily stalks. In the roar of color and sound, I swear I smell the aromatic crushed bud of French lavender, but this may just be the civet punching its way through the floral mass and drawing a phantom Jicky-lite shape in the air.
The polleny narcissus aroma splits the difference between the eyelid-droopingly indolic, over-stuffed scent of a room filled with the flowers and the tartness of freshly-cut daffodil stems plunged into water. I find the rich, true smell of the jasmine and rose absolutes used here to be intoxicating in the way only the real flowers can be. This perfume makes me feel like I'm Dorothy, walking through that field of poppies, drugged up to my eyeballs on their narcotizing scent.
The gasoline beauty of pure jasmine absolute alone would have made this an easy sell for me, even if Chris Rusak hadn't been clever enough to underline its Sambac-like quality with the pleasantly watery bitterness of mint or artemisia and its Grandiflorum-like qualities with a bubblegummy ylang. But he has, so there you go. The arrangement here - the complex juggling and trade-offs involved in keeping this great slew of natural floral absolutes afloat - is flawlessly executed. Especially impressive is the fact that the benzyl acetate facet of natural ylang and jasmine has not been allowed to dominate, thereby saving the composition from the grapey dopiness of the standard big white floral.
A bouquet this rich in white flowers risks heaviness. But thanks to the sharply woody civet and a lily tincture that leans more towards the crunchy green-and-white freshness of muguet than the funeral meatiness of lily, the overall impression remains remarkably crisp. Quasi Un'Absurdia is definitely not as lily-dominant to me as perfumes like Malle's Lys Méditerranée, but actually, there's a time and a place for the insistent salty, almost aquatic-tinged heavy cream of lilies, and this is not it. The 'lily-ness' of Quasi Un'Absurdia is perfectly dosed.
The drydown of Quasi Un'Absurdia will be an unmitigated pleasure-fest for anyone who loves the intricate yet cozy abstraction of the great Guerlain perfumes such as L'Heure Bleue or Chamade but doesn't adore the sometimes fussy powderiness of their finish. This perfume's Guerlainesque almond-custard denouement is streamlined by comparison, a product of cantilevering a huge bouquet of flowers over a sharp, airy base of woods, civet, and soapy musks. In fact, Quasi Un'Absurdia is the equivalent of a John Irving novel: it spins a cracking good yarn in the classical tradition of Alexandre Dumas but borrows the dreamily absurdist, abstract style of Gabriel García Márquez to tell it.
