Juliette Has A Gun
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The rose blooms immediately but it's a cold-water rose, dewy and almost transparent, with none of the warmth you'd expect from a Moroccan varietal. The strawberry crashes in seconds later, all green stem and barely-ripe flesh, creating a tart contrast that makes your mouth water slightly. There's a crystalline quality to this first impression, as if both notes have been suspended in ice.
As the initial chill dissipates, the strawberry sweetens marginally whilst the rose gains a barely-there creaminess, though neither note truly dominates. The musk begins asserting itself, wrapping the fruit and flowers in something clean and skin-like that recalls freshly laundered linen. The powder emerges here too, soft as talc, creating a vintage-modern tension that defines the fragrance's character.
What remains is predominantly musk with ghostly traces of rose petals, the strawberry having evaporated almost entirely. The powder intensifies slightly, creating an intimate cloud that sits close to the skin like a second layer of epidermis. It's quiet, personal, the kind of scent you smell on your own wrist hours later and feel a small rush of recognition.
Miss Charming is Francis Kurkdjian's exercise in deceptive simplicity—three notes that create a peculiarly addictive tangle of contradictions. The Moroccan rose arrives scrubbed clean of indoles and darkness, petals stripped of their thorns and rendered almost translucent. It's not the jammy Damascus rose of traditional perfumery, but something lighter, more aqueous, as if the bloom has been distilled into its most elemental form. Against this backdrop, woodland strawberry brings a tart-sweet jolt that reads more like crushed stems and unripe fruit than the syrupy confection you'd expect. There's a green sharpness here, a slightly metallic tang that keeps the composition from tipping into dessert territory. The musk—clean, almost soapy—wraps around both notes like cling film, creating an intimate skin-scent that hovers rather than projects.
This is perfume for someone who finds overt sensuality tiresome, who prefers whispered suggestions to shouted declarations. It's the fragrance equivalent of a cashmere jumper in ballet pink—soft, yes, but with an edge of deliberate nonchalance. The powdery quality suggests vintage face powder and cotton slips, whilst the freshness keeps it firmly in the present. It's disarming in its straightforwardness, the kind of scent that makes people lean in closer to catch it, then closer still. Kurkdjian has crafted something that feels both nostalgic and modern, girlish yet knowing—charming, indeed, but with a glint of something more calculated beneath the surface.
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2.8/5 (123)