Citizen Queen is the latest perfume to come out from the confidential label
Juliette Has A Gun and out of the hands of perfumer
Francis Kurkdjian. It was released in France in May 2008 and will be shortly in the US.
For the founder of the brand,
Romano Ricci, the gun that a woman aims at a man today cannot but be her perfume. So how does this Juliette's pistol smell like?
Citizen Queen - visibly a play of words on Orson Welles's Citizen Kane in tune with the pop culture references of the house - is presented as an aldehydic chypre (a classic chypre accord rests on notes of bergamot, oakmoss, cistus-labdanum, patchouli, and I am tempted to add ambregris although the Société Française des Parfumeurs does not list it). The scent wishes to be an incarnation of contemporary femininity, which it does with a vintage flair. To this effect, it seems to borrow from several classical sources of inspiration that together read like a list of 20th century feminine fragrance best-sellers: YSL Paris, Rochas Madame Rochas, Femme, Chanel No. 5, Guerlain Mitsouko, Coty Chypre are all contained in this jus at some level. As one can see Citizen Queen is a perfume that comes with a solid insurance policy.
Do I detect a glint of surprise in your eyes? Do not worry, it is really all well and fine in the world of perfumes to practice this type of classics-revisited approach. The problem for me here is that added to this normal plundering activity is the sense that the composition lets down the consumer in its middle stage. These two aspects contribute to turning it into a well-calculated - but not necessarily completely well-calibrated - perfume rather than an artistic one.
The reader might want to know that whenever I read "niche" somewhere my standards do not automatically go up but they refuse to go down on the other hand, despite the fact that I do not intrinsically believe in the distinction between niche and non-niche. I will not say, oh, after all it cost only $ or $$ and basta! I will think, wait this is $$$ and it smells like another $$ scent I know of. The way I view it is that many niche perfumes use this term as a commercial label now like some brands use "natural" to lure you in at no cost and without any quality control. The perfume industry has thus managed to offer itself a pseudo label of quality absolutely free of charge. It is therefore up to the consumer to separate the wheat from the chaff and realize that not all "niche" perfumes are created equal. Citizen Queen is yet another example that shows the artificiality, in many ways, of this technical (the scale of production is indeed different) then cultural distinction...
Continue reading "Juliette Has A Gun Citizen Queen (2008): A Phial of Vintage Chypre Was Hidden In Her Bosom {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
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