Juliette Has a Gun

Juliette Has a Gun is a French niche perfume house founded in 2006 by Romano Ricci, the great-grandson of couturière Nina Ricci [5]. Created between Paris and Grasse, the brand built its identity around a literary conceit: Shakespeare's Juliet reimagined as a free, modern woman who carries a gun as a metaphor for her perfume, her "weapon of seduction." The house remains active, with a live online boutique for Europe and a dedicated North American site, physical retail distribution, and a steady stream of new releases into 2026 [8].

Romano Ricci descends from one of French perfumery's notable lineages — grandson of Robert Ricci, who created the perfume L'Air du Temps — but the brand's own account stresses that he "broke free from his heritage" to work as an independent creator rather than an heir.

Romano Ricci launched Juliette Has a Gun in 2006 after roughly seven years working in the fragrance trade, including a period with France Fragrance and alongside perfumers such as Pierre Bourdon and Francis Kurkdjian [7]. The first two fragrances, Lady Vengeance and Miss Charming, were developed in collaboration with Kurkdjian [6].

The exact founding date carries a minor discrepancy across sources. The brand's own pages, French Wikipedia and The Perfume Society all place the launch in 2006, with The Perfume Society specifying December 2006 [7]. Some editorial and fragrance-database sources instead date the project to 2005, apparently referring to its conception or early development [9]; the 2006 launch date is the one stated by the company and its corroborating references.

The name plays on Shakespeare's Juliet, described by the company as "a twisted heroine of Shakespeare transported into the 21st century with a gun." According to the brand, the gun is a metaphor for perfume — a "weapon of seduction, or simple accessory of bluff."

Juliette Has a Gun positions itself within niche perfumery, which it has described as a "highly codified" industry it set out to challenge. The company frames fragrance as a form of self-expression rather than a pleasant accessory, saying that wearing a signature scent "goes far beyond the simple fact of smelling just 'nice'" and is instead "a statement. An affirmation of who you are."

Romano Ricci, the brand's artistic director, has said he is "convinced that perfume is not yet exhausted, that it must remain an art, a craftmanship." The Perfume Society characterised the house as offering "a new type of elegance within niche perfumery," noting Ricci's stated intent to keep "humour in my work, even though the work is rigorously done." The brand's recurring tagline is "Beauty is one of women's most fascinating weapons," and its early creations were described as olfactory work dedicated to women.

The house's catalogue spans a range of fragrances, several of which it groups together as its signature scents — among them Not a Perfume, Lady Vengeance, Miss Charming, Vanilla Vibes and Musc Invisible. Beyond fragrance, the brand also lists home and body lines.

Its most discussed release is Not a Perfume, a minimalist composition built around Ambroxan and white musk [7]. The Perfume Society notes its molecular, single-ingredient approach; the result is a polarising, skin-like "clean" scent that has become a marker of the house's style. Later launches such as Not Another Oud (2015) and Mmmm… (2016), the latter described as "a gourmand accord of vanilla and neroli," continued the brand's output.

In 2011, Romano Ricci received the French Perfumery Federation's "Prix spécial du Board" (Special Prize of the Board), a FiFi Award handed out by the Fédération française de la parfumerie [6].

The brand is active. New fragrances have continued to appear through 2025 — including Powder Love, Miami Shake, Madeleine Impériale and a collaboration titled Juliette x Skins — and into 2026 with Banana Rush [8]. It operates an online boutique covering France, the rest of Europe (in French, English and Italian) and a separate site for North America, alongside physical retail, and its products are distributed in the Nordic markets.