For me, a perfume is not just the diffusion of a molecular substance, but an experience intimately connected with memories, moments, and life.
It should be private, personal, and bring me a sense of hidden pleasure. Each person’s experience of the same perfume should be unique and different. I believe that a good perfume should be able to blend with an individual’s scent, react with the surrounding temperature and climate, and create a unique sensation, like a precious encounter.
When searching for the most suitable perfume, I usually opt for a unisex fragrance. I spray the perfume in the air and use my nose to sniff it. If there is no distinct gender definition that comes to mind, then the perfume may be worth further exploration. Perfumes are like people, they not only have a singular character, but also evoke a desire to explore. A perfume that is not bound by gender definitions reveals different facets, and I prefer scents that have a subtle coolness and sense of distance.
I don’t often use perfume, possibly due to personal constitution and sensory reasons. Many perfumes, regardless of season, make me feel dizzy when sprayed on me. So a few bottles of perfumes that I frequently use often stand alone on my dressing table, seemingly feeling a bit lonely compared to other perfume categories.
However, recently, I chose a new member for their team, “juliette has a gun not a perfume,”. I first encountered this perfume in the La Rinascente department store in Florence. It truly doesn’t feel like a perfume to me. It can be any scent, like sun-soaked soap, berry cream tart, the scent of a baby blanket, or the smell of the last flower on a tree in autumn… In short, as the packaging says, it doesn’t smell like anything you’ve smelled before.
Later, I looked up its fragrance formula. “Not a Perfume” only uses one synthetic molecule ingredient: Cetalox. Natural cetalox is often used in perfumes to enhance longevity and texture of other spices. This might be the uniqueness of this perfume and the reason why I like it: the harder you try to smell it, the harder it is to describe its complete scent in words. It’s truly fascinating and enticing.
Regarding “juliette has a gun not a perfume,” there are a few life anecdotes I’d like to share:
When choosing a song to describe its scent, I would not hesitate to choose music from Gin Wigmore. Gin Wigmore is a singer-songwriter from New Zealand with a voice that is uniquely un-imitatable, like a female assassin in a long dress with a gun, wandering in the night. Romano Ricci, the founder of Juliette has a Gun, is the grandson of Nina Ricci. As a Frenchman, he was numb to the soulless production line perfumes and the objectification of women in perfume stories, so he wanted to create a completely new perfume brand.
The name Juliette has a Gun continues this idea: a woman who refuses to be bound by others’ rules, a woman who, if Shakespeare’s Juliet hadn’t died but instead wielded a weapon to save herself and Romeo, represents a woman who plays by her own rules and has a colorful soul.
“As for memories of it, although I can’t recall the specific moment when I first smelled its scent.Even after a long time has passed, the scent of the paper can still help me recall those memories.”
