The Scandal franchise is one of the more quietly successful feminine flanker series of the 2020s. Quietly, because the critical reception was mixed — Scandal EDP was dismissed in some quarters as another amber-honey-floral franchise entry — and successful, because it sold extremely well, built a visible following, and earned a sequel that is substantially more interesting than the original.
Scandal EDP (2017): The Honeyed Framework
Julien Rasquinet's original Scandal is a honeyed floral with a gardenia heart and a blood orange opening that gives it more verve than the honey-amber base might suggest. The overall shape is warm, slightly animalic at the base (a quality that reads differently on different skin types), and persistent. It performs well for evening wear. It is not complicated.
What it does correctly: the gardenia is handled with restraint. Gardenia has a tendency in perfumery to go either plasticky or aggressively floral, and Rasquinet avoids both traps. The result is a fragrance with a distinctive but not overwhelming personality.
The flanker's job is to answer the question the original left open. Absolu answers the right one.
Scandal Absolu (2022): The Amber Chypre Turn
Quentin Bisch joined Rasquinet on Scandal Absolu, and the co-signature is visible in the result. This is a more architecturally ambitious fragrance. The honey softens; in its place a patchouli and vetiver base emerges that places Absolu squarely in the amber chypre territory — a category historically demanding more from both the wearer and the perfumer.
The opening is drier, almost smoky. The floral heart, when it arrives, reads as vetiver-warmed rather than sweetened. And the dry-down — this is where Absolu separates itself from the original — becomes genuinely complex, with a leather-adjacent quality that the EDP never reached.
It is the kind of flanker that justifies the naming decision in retrospect: you understand, wearing Absolu, what the EDP was a draft of. Whether the EDP needed to exist for Absolu to be as good as it is, or whether Bisch and Rasquinet simply improved their brief, is a question without a clean answer. The result is a fragrance that should be worn seriously.