Written by Peter Brooker in Fragrance on the 1st February 2017

This month sees the launch of a new Gucci scent, Gucci Guilty Absolute. Born out of a special collaboration between creative director Alessandro Michele and maître parfumeur Alberto Morillas, Gucci Guilty Absolute is an innovative expression of men's woody scent, composed for the liberated man. The master perfumer and Alessandro Michele share the same approach to their craft: an unceasing, passion to create, not buttonholed by traditional rules of fashion and fragrance. Like Alessandro Michele’s collections, there is a mix of messages behind the scent. A leather hero ingredient is an homage to the ultimate Gucci material; while the flacon is finished with details inspired by the codes of a refined lounge; the sensorial textures and colours of cigars and cognac.

Spearheading the campaign is award winning actor, Jared Leto. Exquisitely captured by photographer Glen Luchford, Leto effortlessly exudes an aura of contemporary masculinity that assails through the House: assured, individual and free-spirited. Leto wears distinct tailoring and accents from the design lexicon of Alessandro Michele: a piped edged jacket, shirt with a folded neck-tie and decorative rings.

THE BOTTLE

Rituals and traditions from a masculine world, the textures and colours of cigars and cognacs inspire the bottle design. The smooth flask style lines of the original and best-selling Gucci Guilty fragrance take the same shape for Guilty Absolute, the flacon filled with an Absolute rich cognac-hued scent and finished with a shiny black cap. A tobacco military-coloured outer carton features black interlocking Gs. Another deftly-designed masterpiece, a hallmark of Gucci, that will nestle comfortably into the canon.

THE ESSENCE

Alberto Morillas lends his high artistic sensibility to Gucci Guilty Absolute. A renegade fragrance in the men’s highly populated woody olfactory category, the scent effaces the impression of a traditional woody construction. To set it apart, the master perfumer created a particular blend with a structure that remains unchanged from the first time it is applied to the skin. To do this he defined the scent with two leading notes, custom-mixing a Leather accord WoodleatherTM as a tribute to the House’s leather-making roots, and a rare type of a common perfumery note, GoldenwoodTM, a new natural extract of the Nootka Cypress. Discovering the ingredient under an old bell jar in the Royal Botanical Gardens’ archive, Alberto Morillas selected it especially for Gucci Guilty Absolute. The result is a non-officious complexity, simulating depth by a multitudinous of ultra-dry woody notes. Intensifying the fragrance’s composition are three forms of Patchouli oils with sweet, dark and earthy character - and Vetiver, the fresh and earthy grass from woods. 

Available 1st February 2017. Gucci Guilty Absolute PH 50ml (£54). Gucci Guilty Absolute PH 90ml (£70).

The result of a collaboration between Alessandro Michele and Alberto Morillas, Gucci Release Guilty Absolute with Jared Leto.