Alberto Absolu

“… Shioya asked each of his scent artists to create their self portrait; Morillas'—he is acknowledged as one of the preeminent perfumers of his generation—is called Alberto Absolu, and it is utterly glorious. I love it so wildly and it is at the same time so unusual while managing to be so utterly un-strange that it is virtually impossible to describe. It is rich without money, honey without sweet, fresh without green, masculine without male. It shifts. It is sunlight without any heat at all (in fact it is a rather cool scent, though its luminescence is not blue but rather, oddly, golden yellow). Even as it gives pleasure, it forces its audience to ask of it: What the hell, exactly, are you doing? It is of course a work of art in the literal sense, but a work whose outstanding characteristic is being, like a movie or recreational drugs or a good story, an experience one can simultaneously do in one's head like a math problem and lose oneself in like sleep.”

— Chandler Burr, Five Favorite Scents | September 2005