For transitional weather, sometimes you have to cheer yourself up with a beautiful in-between-weather fragrance. I love a perfume that’s–well, perfume, as opposed to PERFUME for everyday goings on. In keeping with Warner’s campaign of denial, “This Is Not A Bra,” Juliette Has A Gun has followed suit and states in a very Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe way that it’s Not A Perfume. Read on…

Now, of course it IS a perfume, but a delightfully subtle whisper of one. It’s so unintrusively pretty I actually accosted my friend Emily Hebert the other day at a birthday party to find out what laundry detergent she was using. It turns out she was simply wearing Not A Perfume, which clinched its position as one of my fall favorites. Like the famous pipe painting by Rene Margritte, which is not a pipe but an image of one, Not A Perfume is an abstract intangible vibe of a perfume without going whole fragrant hog. Like its pure white packaging, it’s fresh, clean, clinical. What’s great about it? It’s essentially (diluted) Ambrox in a bottle. C16 H28 O is the formula of Ambrox, the one and only ingredient that makes this new fragrance. Ambrox is born in the ’50s by famed fragrance house Firmenich to replace grey amber, which is too expensive to use often. Ambrox is used, in general, as base note, but for Not A Perfume, it stars center stage. The fragrance plays on the contradiction because its composition is strictly molecular and it is the only perfume without allergen.

Plus? Every time I say the brand’s name out loud, I have to sing it in the melody of the below.

It’s an excellent ditty, n’est-ce pas? Have you tried Juliette Has A Gun’s Not A Perfume? Tell me about it in the comments.

Juliette Has A Gun Not A Perfume retails for $80 at b-glowing.com.

Disclaimer: Sample provided for editorial consideration. 

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