Crazy Me by Rabanne

I think Silvi_del_agua’s comment is the fairest. We shouldn’t be so harsh and call it repulsive, because every nose is a world, and that offends the creator. As she says, it smells like shy mimosa; the wasabi is hard for me to detect, although I know its smell well well. At the start, it seems more promising, but after a few minutes, it’s just the mimosa. On my skin, it’s one of the worst experiences I’ve had: less than two hours, and it was hard to smell it, even burying my nose in my wrist, and the sillage is nothing, not even for you to feel it. I don’t think the whole line is bad or repulsive; there are some well-made and interesting ones, like Major Me, or simply this one doesn’t work for us but surely does for someone. When it comes to perfumes, everything is subjective, but you should never insult the house or the perfume so much.

What little personality does this fragrance have? The name doesn’t fit it at all. The opening is promising, with a spicy, woody sweetness (the wasabi), but within minutes it transforms into an excessively powdery mimosa with background spices. It sounds better than it smells; it’s not a marvel, and it’s only noticeable right up against the skin. The longevity is also disappointing; after three hours, it’s gone. If you’re looking for something soft, you might like it, but what a boring fragrance.

I tested the entire Pacollection family (or Paquéseñorpaqué as I call it) and am unifying my thoughts here. There are almost no reviews on Fragrantica, and I’m not surprised: Puig did it with little enthusiasm, and you can’t even find it in neighborhood perfumeries. The bottles and names did catch my attention; the design is suggestive and modern, very different from the rest of the house, which tends to be more vulgar and cheap. They have round metal bottles, like helium balloons, an aesthetic closer to Rabanne than to kitsch things like the One Million bar. But the truth is the bottle is nice and the perfume is bad, with an annoying touch. At least two have personality, but the line’s signature is that sticky, burnt tone, like batteries and electronics mixed with sugar, syrups, vaper smoke, and oily mosquito repellent liquids. The guide of the six is a fetid, sticky, insidious, and ultra-artificial texture. Crazy Me is what’s on this sheet: disgusting. It’s funny that it goes its own way and doesn’t resemble anything current, but you need very special tastes to like it. If it had parents, they would be those rare seasonal Comme des Garçons and some old, spicy floral-vegetable talcum powder. It smells like wet, gummy talcum powder, with a distressing touch like seventies basil with an old latex smell, and a touch of amber with a galbanum aftertaste. I don’t like any family; I can’t stand those greasy accords that remind me of blood clots under fluorescent light, but finding them in a 2020 perfume is curious. I see the mimosa notes, but I only smell that at the dry-down; it’s a super recognizable, honeyed yellow flower. I don’t smell the sandalwood, even though the sample card lists it. What I smell is a seventies green paste, a mashed mass of vetiver roots, lemon grass, galbanum, mint, or raw basil, all a matte freshness. The wasabi is noticeable for its bitter, green spice, but if they don’t tell you, it could be periwinkle or immortelle, because the tone is old-fashioned and rustic, like a weed. The spicy peaks between the sordid green remind me of cloves, so at some point I think I’m smelling a seventies feminine version of something like Jaipur pour homme. Only at the end does an strangely refreshing mimosa seem to resurface, those that smell like warm chamomile. I’d gift it and throw it down a ravine, but surely someone might like it; it breaks out of every current mold. The official sheet also lists blackcurrant. Strong Me is unbearable for my natural hatred of these loud, woody vanillas, but I think it’s one of the few in the line that might find an audience, surely fans of brands focused on potency rather than perfume dimension, like Lush or Montale. Strong Me is synthetic and sticky, almost a monologue of artificial woody vanilla; it smells like vanilla pods, dry wood, and alcoholic liquors boiled in a copper cauldron. It’s a woody, burnt, and extremely potent vanilla that clogs your nose like you’re a junkie of essence burners. The vibe is Viktor & Rolf, without naturalness, a loud, oriental, disco perfume, shameless and show-off, unisex. The metallic notes, usually cold and sharp, here are seasoned, cooked, wrapped, pure rust. It’s interesting to see how Davana enters strongly in the heart, giving it a nice bitter, herbaceous, and vegetal side to that single-layer formula of vanilla and fermented liquors under neon lights. I find it annoying, harassing, and impertinent; every time I smelled my hand, I had a gag reflex, but I suppose it will have its audience. Not my taste, but it’s a moderately well-made perfume that works. Genius Me is a manual aromatic; it will please men who like that stream of soft, pre-nineties sport waters. Don’t be fooled by the futuristic and technological bottle; aside from a horrible opening like a cold sore flavored with Fanta, it’s a book aromatic, with its oakmoss and especially the rosemary, which instead of having that invigorating, crunchy tone of Badesa, acquires a boiled, bloated body with memories of boiled egg or stagnant water, which sometimes happens with grapefruit. In this phase, I’m not interested at all because it reminds me of things from the Tsar stick or Miyake’s Agua Azul. I don’t get the metallic accord, and when it dries, the orange returns to the spotlight, but softer and warmer, like Clinique Happy. I find it masculine and nothing of my taste because of its soft, boiled, sickly, and morbid nature. It’s a first cousin of Terre Hermès Eau Fraiche, Happy pour Homme, and the horrible Hermès water of wonders line. At first, it smells like the phlegm of those horrible things that congeal in mucus, like morning spit. Now that I think about it, this Genius Me reminds me of a cold literally: on one side, the cough drop flavored with orange, and on the other, the carnal and gummy memories of green phlegm. A masterpiece. The official sheet lists the Cristalfizz molecule, which is like an aldehyde. Dangerous Me is terrible; it’s born knowing it’s a cliché clone more seen than the tbo, the typical twist on Dior Homme Intense and the YSL L’Homme range, just uglier and faker still. It’s something smelled two hundred million times in the male sector of the last decade, simply another twist on no one asked for, of toasted ginger and powdery woody vanillas. You wouldn’t recognize it among others because it lacks personality; it’s the typical civilized, blurred, soft oriental male, with hints of powdered food spices, until the vanilla becomes more headstrong and rusty, smelling exactly like one of those white tin cans with a red cross on the lid where half of Spain stored used bandages. Additionally, it’s especially sinister, making you think of sordid things, like the Buffalo Bill Zulo house in The Silence of the Lambs. If someone wanted to guess it blindly, it would be like a cousin of Le Male Parfum, but more artificial. Erotic Me is the only original in the line along with Crazy Me, but watch out, be careful; it’s a disgusting mess. I love that it exists because among all the riffraff of clone perfumes, finding something so challenging is refreshing. When I tested it, I was constantly trying to figure out what the hell that powdery texture was that made me want to pull my nose off, a porous, organic sweetness that turned my insides inside out, and then something clicked: cornstarch and porridge. I see the listed note is milk, and I testify that’s what it smells like. Not cold, refreshing, or hot steaming milk. Not even directly lactonic; it smells like milk heated in a pot and cooling down, or the dregs of a milk cup with a tea bag. Honestly, I need a little more to vomit. The opening is fruity and smells like children’s porridge that mixes milk, fruit, and cereals, but the dry-down, God, smells literally like milk slightly sweetened with two petals of spiced flowers, a sordid, tempered, almost alive aftertaste impossible to enjoy. Erotic Me is a perfume of incredible photorealism. I certainly don’t understand who wants to smell like a crazy goat was sprayed on them, but tastes differ. The sample lists incense, which doesn’t exist when sniffing. Fabulous Me is a horror. Like the rest of this schizophrenic family, it’s coated in a phosphorescent, halogen texture that makes you want to jump off a cliff. The difference is that they get creative and add pumpkin, a note that if you must use it in perfumery, let God see it. Fabulous Me is a balsamic mole of cooked pumpkin; it doesn’t quite smell like angel hair, literally, but that’s the direction. It has an annoying, cloying sweetness, like its clan mates, but here it’s even more unpleasant as it mixes with raw accords that remind you of a garbage bag or organic waste. I don’t feel the rhubarb, at most a very slight freshness in the heart, but nothing perceptible. The sandalwood is the same. What really shines, and sings Traviata, is an unlisted vanilla that unifies the entire Paquéseñorpaqué line. P.S. I appreciate that this saga destined to die soon breaks away from one-millionth molecules and invincible ones to do something more artistic and creative, although the result is either indifferent to me or directly odious due to its dripping, slimy, and invasive demeanor. I bet they’ll delist it in no time. P.S. II. I only find two truly novel ones: Erotic Me and Crazy Me; the rest are twists on something smelled two hundred million times.

They tested it on paper for me at a Corte Inglés, and as soon as they sprayed it, an intense mimosa scent flooded me, which is one of my favorite notes. I’d like to test it on skin to see its longevity and sillage (on paper it held up quite well and was noticeable, but not excessive), but I loved it at first and have already marked it for spring. The only thing that didn’t convince me was the futuristic bottle; to give you an idea, it looks like an aluminum pouch with a nozzle for kids’ fruit purees, just more rigid.