Juliette Has A Gun
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Rose oxide announces itself with that unmistakable metallic rasp, like licking a battery wrapped in rose petals. The blackcurrant bud absolute immediately adds a humid, almost feline muskiness whilst ambroxan hums underneath with mineral persistence, creating a disorienting push-pull between sharp and smooth.
Tuberose unfurls with all its narcotic creaminess, but the patchouli keeps it earthbound and slightly soiled. The animalic quality intensifies here—that intimate skin-warmth where perfume and perspiration blur—whilst the synthetic scaffold of ambroxan continues to pulse, preventing anything from becoming too comfortably pretty.
White musk and vanilla create a soft-focus conclusion, though traces of that initial metallic rose still linger like an aftertaste. The composition sits close to skin now, a vaguely sweet, vaguely soapy, vaguely unsettling ghost of the opening's drama—refined into something almost innocent, if you ignore the faint animalic whisper beneath.
Mad Madame is a portrait in contrasts, built on the peculiar metallic shriek of rose oxide colliding with ambroxan's mineral warmth. This isn't the Mad Madame who hosts garden parties; this is the one who keeps exotic pets and wears vintage Biba to the supermarket. Romano Ricci constructs something deliberately unsettling here—the blackcurrant bud absolute lends a feral, urinous edge that tangles with tuberose's creamy indoles in a way that reads simultaneously clean and dirty, like expensive lingerie after a long night. The patchouli isn't the head-shop variety but rather that cool, earth-dusted version that amplifies the composition's animalic undertow. What makes this fascinating is how the synthetic nature of the ambroxan and white musk creates a glassy, almost holographic quality around these otherwise lush materials. It's floral in the way a botanical illustration is floral—recognisable but somehow removed from nature, preserved under glass. The vanilla in the base doesn't sweeten so much as smooth the edges, like petroleum jelly on chapped lips. This is for the person who finds Fracas too timid, who appreciates that slight queasy feeling good perfume can induce. It's a Friday evening scent, a second-date fragrance, something you wear when you want to be remembered rather than merely liked. Not mad in the chaotic sense, but mad in the Victorian diagnosis sense—inappropriate, ungovernable, fascinating.
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3.4/5 (96)