Juliette Has A Gun

Who is Juliette? Why does she have a gun?

Our Shakespearean Juliette was pining away for her Romeo on a balcony covered by beautiful sweet scented roses with twisted vines and spikey thorns. But wait, there is no gun. Juliette has a Gun is a line of perfumes created by Romano Ricci. Yes, Romano Ricci is one of the Ricci’s, great grandson of Nina Ricci and grandson to Robert Ricci. Still loved and enjoyed by all, Nina Ricci’s famous romantic perfume created by her son Robert Ricci, and the master perfumer Francis Fabron, namely, L’Air Du Temps, came to life in 1948 and has been worn for decades by brides, debutantes and lovers of romance, time and time again. Totally ageless and refined, it is an eternal classic.

When Romano Ricci was younger, he rebelled against everything his family stood for, but after the passing of his grandfather in 1988 and the family business being sold in 2000, he returned to his heritage. By 2005 Romano Ricci had his own company and launched his first project in 2006 called ‘Juliette has a Gun.’ With the help of Francis Kurkdjian, who is one of the best modern perfumers in the perfume world today (he created scents for Dior, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Narciso Rodriguez and Elizabeth Arden), a range of five scents was created for this collection.

His love of Shakespeare and roses was the basic inspiration for this range. Romano Ricci himself is a man who is considered to be a trendsetter and a forward thinker. At 28 he is young, charming and adorned by a Fedora hat. His signature style is that of a sharp well-dressed classic young man with classy suits and immaculate tailoring. He is best described as a rock ‘n’ roll romantic.

Miss Charming and Lady Vengeance where the first to be released in 2006. These were the light and the dark, the good and bad of his beloved Juliette.

Miss Charming is enclosed in a white glass bottle with black flourished writing and topped with a fuchsia bow. This is classed as a fruity floral, a pure blend of Moroccan rose, litchi, strawberry and musk.

This encapsulates the fresh, sweet innocence of our heroine as she waits and longs for her Romeo. On the other side is Lady Vengeance, a chypre floral of Bulgarian rose, patchouli and vanilla. This is housed in a black glass bottle with white Shakespearean script and adorned with a black bow. This scent is the darker side of Juliette, the one with the gun. She is sensual, mysterious and a force to be reckoned with.

2008 saw the release of the rebellious Citizen Queen, another Shakespearean character, from Romano Ricci’s imagination.  This is a floral woody musk, again housed in a milky white bottle with black script, notes of rose, iris, leather, amber. immortal and labdanum which make this an animalistic scent with a sense of danger. Following this in 2009 was Midnight Oud and Calamity J.

Midnight Oud is an oriental fragrance of rose, oud, amber, musk, saffron, geranium and patchouli. Contained within a silver metal cylinder it’s an oriental fragrance blended with Middle Eastern agar wood or Oud which is highly prized and precious and used mainly in Arabic attars or perfume oils. Finally a different twist of his beloved Shakespeare, Romano created Calamity J. This unique scent is the masculine fragrance in the women’s range, a woody melange of musk, iris, patchouli and amber. Housed in a midnight cylinder with flourished writing, this scent is powerful and seductive, masculine yet feminine, perfect for reflecting the strength of women in society.

Each of his scents is unique in the way that Romano Ricci has given them a personality. Each of us has a little "something" of one of these fragrances within us all. Do you connect with being naive and innocent like Miss Charming, mysterious and seductive like Lady Vengeance, cavalier and dangerous like Citizen Queen, magical like Midnight Oud or feminine yet strong like Calamity J?

Images: Mark Dupuy, Juliette Has a Gun