Les Belles de Ricci (1996)

Les Belles de Ricci by Nina Ricci was launched in April 1996 as a bright, mischievous Eau de Toilette created expressly for girls and young women aged about fifteen to twenty. It was later renamed Les Belles de Ricci Liberté Acidulée in 1999; in Japan, it was marketed under the wonderfully eccentric name Provence Tomato. These changes underline how strongly the fragrance’s identity rested on freshness, tangy fruit, and its novel tomato theme rather than on the more formal, romantic femininity traditionally associated with the Ricci house.

Nina Ricci was the Italian-born French couturière Maria “Nina” Ricci (1883–1970), celebrated for founding the Paris fashion house Nina Ricci in 1932 with her son, Robert Ricci. She became famous for clothes of exceptional softness, grace, and flattering femininity—garments that looked refined without appearing severe. Robert Ricci extended that vision into perfume, establishing Parfums Nina Ricci in 1946 and helping make the name internationally synonymous with French fragrance. By the 1990s, however, the house was also seeking a younger audience: not merely the poised Ricci woman of L’Air du Temps, but the spirited girl just beginning to define her own taste.

Les Belles de Ricci is French, meaning “the beauties of Ricci,” or, more naturally, “Ricci’s lovely girls.” It is pronounced roughly, “lay bell duh ree-CHEE.” The phrase feels affectionate and lightly theatrical, like a circle of pretty, laughing friends rather than an unreachable ideal of beauty. It evokes fresh faces, glossy hair, shared secrets, fruit-flavored lip gloss, a sunny afternoon in the city, and the delicious sense of being just old enough to experiment with independence. Crucially, belles does not have to imply conventional perfection; in the context of the advertising, these are girls whose beauty lies in their animation, their humor, and their refusal to be overly solemn.

The name was a particularly shrewd choice for Parfums Nina Ricci. It retained the prestige and recognizability of the Ricci signature while softening it with a plural, sociable, youthful voice. Rather than presenting one idealized “Nina Ricci woman,” it welcomed a whole generation of “beautiful Ricci girls”: lively, emotional, occasionally impertinent, and passionately involved in life. The house’s press language—“joyful lightness,” “carefree spirit,” smiles, playfulness, and a “wink” to youth—makes clear that the fragrance was meant to feel like a companion to adolescence and early womanhood, not a grown-up accessory borrowed from one’s mother.

Its launch came in the middle of the 1990s, a period often remembered for minimalism, youthful individualism, and a new casualness in fashion and beauty. Slip dresses, baby tees, denim, platform shoes, small backpacks, glossy makeup, and the mixture of thrift-store playfulness with sleek designer simplicity all shaped the decade’s style. Young consumers were increasingly treated as a perfume audience in their own right. Fragrance advertising moved away from the overtly glamorous, power-dressed excess of the 1980s and toward cleaner, lighter, more personal scents: transparent florals, watery notes, citrus, green accords, fresh fruit, and easy-to-wear musks. A perfume could be playful, unconventional, and deliberately un-perfumey while still feeling fashionable.

Young women of 1996 could therefore have read Les Belles de Ricci as an invitation rather than an instruction. It did not demand the polished seductiveness of a grand oriental or the sophistication of a classic chypre. Instead, it suggested a fragrance for friendship, first freedoms, romantic uncertainty, laughter, and the thrilling emotional turbulence of being on the threshold of adulthood. The name promised prettiness, certainly, but also personality—beauty with a sense of humor.

Created by Nathalie Feisthauer, Jean Guichard, and David Apel, the composition was classified as a fresh, light green-fruity-floral fragrance. Even before one considers its full note structure, the name suggests a scent of youthful brightness: green, sparkling, fruity, floral, and a little surprising. That promise is fulfilled through its dominant tomato accord, expressed in three dimensions: the snapped, sunlit bitterness of tomato leaf; the tender floral nuance of tomato blossom; and the softly fruity flesh of the tomato itself. Bitter orange, mint, and basil make the opening feel brisk and tonic, while wisteria, magnolia, and freesia bring a quivering, airy floral softness. Raspberry and fig wood give the idea a more luminous, gently sensual finish.

In the context of 1990s perfumery, Les Belles de Ricci belonged to the broader movement toward freshness and transparency, but its tomato theme gave it an unusual character. Green notes, fruit, mint, watery effects, and sheer florals were very much of their moment; the decade embraced scents that felt clean, lively, and less formal than the dense florals and assertive orientals of the preceding decade. Yet the use of tomato leaf, tomato blossom, and tomato fruit as the fragrance’s central identity was strikingly original for a major youthful launch. Tomato leaf had appeared as a distinctive green accent in perfumery before, but rarely with such an explicitly playful, almost garden-to-lips gloss interpretation. It made Les Belles de Ricci feel both fashionable and memorable: a bright 1990s fruity floral with the unexpected, fragrant snap of a tomato vine.

Fragrance Composition:

So what does it smell like? Les Belles de Ricci is classified as a fresh light green-fruity-floral fragrance for women. Press materials read: "And the fragrance? First, you notice green, tangy, natural notes of tomato leaves, bitter orange, mint, and basil. Then come trembling floral notes—wisteria, magnolia, freesia, and tomato blossom—softened by fruity notes of tomato fruit, raspberry, and fig wood, which give it a luminous sensuality. It is a tonic, invigorating, light-filled Eau de Toilette whose dominant accord is tomato, expressed through its leaves, flowers, and fruit."

• Top notes: Seville bitter orange, English mint, Comoros basil and green tomato leaf 
• Middle notes: green tomato fruit, tomato blossom, wisteria, magnolia, nasturtium, freesia 
• Base notes: raspberry, fig wood, Sudanese myrrh, Virginia cedar and cypress

Scent Profile:

Les Belles de Ricci opens with the exhilarating scent of a garden awakened by sun and rain: the green, slightly sharp breath of tomato leaf is the first impression, like rubbing a vine between the fingers and releasing its watery, peppery bitterness. This effect is usually built through a carefully balanced accord rather than a simple essential oil. Tomato foliage can be represented by traces of natural leaf materials, but its vivid, dewy snap is most reliably recreated with green aroma materials—often including leaf-alcohol effects, galbanum-like facets, and crisp, aldehydic green notes. Their synthetic clarity gives the naturalistic idea its startling brightness, making the tomato leaf smell freshly crushed rather than heavy or vegetal.

Seville bitter orange adds another kind of tang: bitter, sun-warmed citrus peel with a faintly floral, almost marmalade-like richness. The oranges of Seville, Spain, are prized for their intensely bitter, aromatic peel; compared with sweet orange, they possess a darker, more complex citrus character, with dry peel, green twigs, and a light suggestion of orange blossom. English mint follows with a cool, clean, slightly sweet lift. It is less medicinal than a forceful peppermint effect, more like bruised mint leaves in a glass of cold water—refreshing, green, and quietly aromatic. Comorian basil introduces a peppery, anise-tinged herbal note. Basil grown in the Comoros Islands is especially valued in perfumery for its warm, spicy-green profile, often shaped by methyl chavicol, the naturally occurring aromatic constituent that gives certain basil oils their sweet, tarragon-like anisic nuance. Here, it keeps the green accord lively and sophisticated, preventing the tomato from becoming merely salad-like.

The heart develops the fragrance’s unusual central theme: tomato in all its imagined forms. Green tomato fruit has the tart, aqueous bite of an unripe tomato—crisp skin, cool juice, and a faint suggestion of the vine still clinging to it. Tomato fruit itself does not provide a conventional essential oil that can simply be distilled into perfume, so this sensation is constructed from aroma chemicals and supporting natural materials. Green, fruity, watery, and faintly sulfurous nuances may be blended in minute amounts to suggest the fruit’s juicy, sunlit pulp without reproducing its literal culinary odor. The result is a more polished perfume fantasy of tomato: bright, translucent, and mouthwatering.

Tomato blossom contributes an even more elusive impression, a tender floral-green breath hovering above the fruit and leaves. Like many delicate blossoms, it does not yield a standard, commercially useful perfumery essence; its scent is generally recreated from headspace analysis and perfumers’ accords. Soft floral materials, green notes, and lightly honeyed or pollen-like facets can evoke its fleeting odor, lending the fragrance a sense of a flowering vegetable garden rather than a conventional bouquet. This artful synthetic reconstruction is what makes the tomato idea feel complete: leaf, flower, and fruit become a coherent radiant accord rather than isolated novelty notes.

Wisteria brings a fragile, lilac-like floral haze, sweet and airy with a soft, slightly powdery grape-flower effect. Because wisteria is not generally available as a practical natural perfumery extract, its scent must be composed, often through floral aroma materials that suggest its violet, honeyed, and fresh-green facets. Magnolia adds a fuller, creamier bloom, somewhere between lemony petals, white tea, and a pale floral warmth. Natural magnolia materials can be used in perfumery, but the expansive, freshly opened-flower effect commonly relies on supportive floral molecules; these allow magnolia to remain luminous and transparent rather than becoming dense or indolic.

Nasturtium lends a charmingly peppery, green-floral quirk—evoking its edible flowers, peppery leaves, and bright, almost radish-like freshness. It is another flower whose scent is generally rendered as an accord rather than extracted directly. Freesia smooths these eccentric garden notes with its familiar springlike radiance: a sheer, sweet floral scent with touches of pepper, citrus, and clean petals. Freesia itself offers little useful essential oil, so its perfume identity is also largely an artistic reconstruction. In Les Belles de Ricci, these constructed floral notes are not a limitation but a virtue; their delicacy enables the flowers to tremble around the tomato accord instead of overwhelming it.

The base is soft, fruity, resinous, and quietly woody. Raspberry gives a bright red-fruit kiss, tart at first and then gently jammy, as though a berry had been warmed between the fingers. There is no true raspberry essential oil in normal perfumery practice; the effect is built from aroma materials, classically including raspberry-ketone-type facets, alongside violet, berry, jammy, and woody notes. This composed raspberry accord connects naturally with the tomato fruit’s juicy aspect while adding sweetness and a youthful, playful glow.

Fig wood brings the dry, milky-green scent of a fig tree rather than merely the sweetness of fig flesh: pale wood, sap, leaf, and a faint coconut-like creaminess. A fig effect is usually an accord, since the recognizable “fig” scent is not obtained from a straightforward distillation of the fruit. Green leaf notes, lactonic materials that suggest creamy sap, and dry woods create its distinctive texture. It gives the fragrance a more sensual, shaded contrast to its sparkling opening, like stepping from a bright kitchen garden beneath the broad leaves of a fig tree.

Sudanese myrrh deepens the composition with a quiet, ambered resinous warmth. Myrrh from northeastern Africa, including Sudan, is associated with a dry, balsamic profile: subtly smoky, medicinal, and bittersweet, with a faintly wine-like or licorice-toned richness. It does not make Les Belles de Ricci heavy or incense-like; rather, it provides a soft golden shadow beneath the transparent fruits and flowers. Virginia cedar—actually a juniper native to eastern North America rather than a true cedar—adds its familiar pencil-shaving dryness, clean wood, and faintly smoky, almost leathery edge. Cypress completes the base with the cool, resinous green of evergreen needles and dry bark. Together, the woods hold the bright tomato, mint, and floral notes in place, giving this light-filled Eau de Toilette a graceful, lasting structure.

The overall effect is a perfume garden rendered in vivid color: bitter orange peel, mint, basil, tomato vines, fragile flowers, red berries, fig shade, and pale aromatic woods. Its artistry lies in the way natural essences and carefully constructed accords work together. The natural materials provide depth, texture, and botanical credibility, while synthetically composed tomato, freesia, wisteria, nasturtium, raspberry, and fig effects supply the clarity and imaginative realism that make Les Belles de Ricci feel so fresh, mischievous, and distinctly alive.

Bottles:

Les Belles de Ricci was presented in one of the most cheerful and unconventional bottles of the 1990s: a plump spiral of luminous light-green glass, its rounded coil suggesting a fat little serpent, a curl of ribbon, or even a playful swirl of green ice cream. Rather than striving for the poised symmetry or classical elegance traditionally expected of a Nina Ricci flacon, it seemed to have been drawn in one carefree gesture. The design made the perfume feel tactile and animated—an object to pick up, turn in the hand, and smile at.

The flacon was designed by Elisabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti, the imaginative French design duo known for bringing wit, fantasy, color, and sculptural exuberance to furniture and decorative objects. Their approach was perfectly suited to a fragrance intended for young women: the bottle does not merely contain the perfume but gives its personality a physical form. Its fat, coiled silhouette mirrors the scent’s green, tangy, slightly mischievous tomato-and-herb character, while its exaggerated curves make it feel almost edible, like a confection or an icy dessert.

Its anise-green color was deliberately vivid and tart—less the muted green of a formal chypre than the bright green of a candy, tender tomato vine, or a scoop of pistachio-colored ice cream. The lacquered glass gave this color an unusual depth and a velvety surface, making the bottle feel sensuous rather than cold or brittle. The finish softened the usual transparency of glass; held in the hand, it had the smooth, voluptuous presence of a small sculptural object, as though its color had been painted from within.

Atop the green spiral sits a metallic-pink stopper shaped as a five-petalled flower gathered around a central pistil. Its polished pink sheen was meant to sparkle like a Christmas ornament, creating a deliberately joyous contrast with the tart green body. The flower makes the bottle feel like a fantasy garden object: a blossom perched on a curling vine, with a wink of toy-like glamour. It reinforces the youthful, irreverent spirit of Les Belles de Ricci—bright, feminine, a little absurd in the most charming way, and entirely uninterested in melancholy.

The clear colored bottles came out in 2005 and replaced the lacquered bottles.

Fate of the Fragrance:

Although Les Belles de Ricci disappeared under its original name in 1999, the fragrance itself was not simply abandoned. It was rechristened Liberté Acidulée and repositioned as part of a newly expanded Les Belles de Ricci trio. In Japan, it appeared as Provence Tomato, a name that foregrounded its most unusual and memorable feature: the bright green, leafy, fruit-and-blossom tomato accord. The new range also included the softly romantic Amour d’Amandier and the more adventurous, spice-led Délice d’Épices. Together, the three scents offered not one prescribed version of youthful femininity, but three changing moods—tender, impulsive, playful, and free.

Liberté Acidulée is French, and translates most naturally as “Tangy Freedom,” “Zesty Liberty,” or “Fizzing Freedom.” It is pronounced approximately, “lee-bair-TAY ah-see-doo-LAY.” The word liberté carries the clear, uplifting idea of freedom: independence, movement, self-expression, and the first exhilarating sense of making one’s own choices. Acidulée is a particularly delicious word. In French it means lightly acidic or tart, but it also suggests the bright, fizzy, sour-sweet character of citrus candies, sherbet, sparkling drinks, and fruit-flavored confections. It is not harsh acidity; it is a lively, mouthwatering tartness.

Parfums Nina Ricci chose the name brilliantly for this particular perfume because it translated the original Les Belles de Ricci character into a more individual, emotion-led identity. The fragrance’s green tomato leaf, bitter orange, mint, basil, and raspberry facets already conveyed a sharp, effervescent freshness. Liberté Acidulée gave that sensation a name: freedom with a sparkle, independence with a mischievous bite. It also suited a late-1990s teenage audience increasingly encouraged to see fragrance as an expression of mood and personality rather than a solemn declaration of glamour.

The name evokes an anise-green bottle catching the light, a fizzy citrus drink, green leaves snapped between the fingers, sour candy on the tongue, and a spontaneous afternoon with friends. Emotionally, it suggests laughter, impatience, optimism, and a touch of irreverence—the feeling of wanting to go somewhere, do something, and not be told how to behave. It is a more energetic and less traditionally romantic idea of femininity than Amour d’Amandier, with its almond blossom, heliotrope, vanilla, and cloud of musk; and it is lighter and more playful than the warm spice and jasmine sensuality of Délice d’Épices.

The three fragrances were presented as “three emotions,” designed to accompany the shifting moods of a young woman: romantic blue for Amour d’Amandier, sunny orange for Délice d’Épices, and tart anise green for Liberté Acidulée. Within that colorful emotional wardrobe, Liberté Acidulée was the refreshing, unpredictable member—the one for moments of restlessness, amusement, and self-assured spontaneity. Its renamed identity made explicit what the original perfume had always been: not merely a pretty floral, but a buoyant, green, tomato-bright celebration of youthful freedom.

Fragrance Composition:

So what does it smell like? Liberté Acidulée is classified as a fresh fruity floral fragrance for women.

• Top notes: tomato leaf, black currant, blueberry, orange, basil and mint
• Middle notes: tomato flower, freesia, magnolia, nasturtium, violet leaf, and wisteria
• Base notes: tomato, raspberry, myrrh, cedar, cypress, fig wood, and fig leaf

Scent Profile:

Liberté Acidulée opens with the vivid green crackle of tomato leaf: a cool, watery, slightly bitter scent that recalls rubbing a fresh vine between the fingers, with its peppery sap, damp stem, and sunlit garden sharpness. This is not ordinarily conveyed by a simple, readily distilled tomato-leaf oil. Perfumers create its lifelike effect through a green accord, sometimes supported by natural leaf materials but given clarity and diffusion by aroma chemicals with crisp, leafy, aldehydic, and gently metallic facets. These materials make the tomato leaf seem freshly bruised and alive, preserving its bright tartness in an Eau de Toilette.

Black currant adds a darker, tangier fruit note—purple-black berries, crushed green leaves, and the characteristic fruity-sulfurous sparkle associated with cassis. In perfumery, natural black-currant-bud absolute can provide a hauntingly realistic, winey-green effect, but it is powerful and can become animalic or catty if overused. The juicier berry impression is therefore commonly expanded with fruity aroma materials, which soften the natural bud’s wildness into something more playful. Blueberry adds a rounder blue-violet fruit effect: sweet skin, faint tart juice, and a soft, almost jammy bloom. There is no standard blueberry essential oil with the recognizable fresh-fruit scent, so this note is necessarily composed from fruity, floral, and sometimes lactonic aroma materials. Its synthetic construction lends the perfume a clean, luminous berry sweetness rather than the heaviness of cooked preserves.

Orange brightens the fruit accord with sunny peel, juicy pulp, and a delicate floral freshness. Natural sweet-orange oil, pressed from the peel, gives a cheerful, familiar citrus radiance, while more volatile citrus facets can be strengthened with carefully chosen aroma chemicals so that the note survives beyond the first few minutes on the skin. Basil gives the opening its aromatic lift: green, peppery, and faintly anisic, as though a basil leaf had been torn beside the tomato vine. Mint supplies an immediate chilled sensation, clean and sweetly herbal, like cool air passing over crushed leaves. Together, basil and mint sharpen the fruit, keeping it brisk and “acidulated”—tart, fizzy, and never syrupy.

The floral heart continues the garden illusion with tomato flower, an exceptionally delicate scent rendered as an accord. Tomato blossoms do not yield a conventional, practical perfumery essence, so their scent must be suggested through a transparent blending of green, floral, pollen-like, and lightly honeyed materials. The result is a floral breath that seems to hover between the tomato leaves and the fruit: tender, airy, and touched by sunlight. Freesia brings its clean spring-flower sweetness, with subtle peppery and citrus facets. Since freesia does not produce a useful essential oil, perfumers construct it from floral aroma chemicals; these give its petal-like freshness remarkable transparency and help the perfume retain its light-filled character.

Magnolia adds a more supple white-floral quality, creamy yet fresh, with nuances of lemony petals, pale tea, and warm floral flesh. Natural magnolia materials can contribute to a formula, but the sensation of a magnolia flower opening in warm air is usually amplified through floral molecules that keep it radiant rather than dense. Wisteria introduces a fragile, lilac-like veil, faintly honeyed, violet-tinged, and almost wistful. Like freesia, wisteria is generally a composed perfume impression rather than a directly extracted essence. Nasturtium lends an unusual green pepperiness—suggestive of its edible flowers and brisk, peppery leaves—while violet leaf adds the cool scent of wet foliage, cucumber skin, and crushed stems. Violet-leaf material, whether natural or recreated, gives the floral heart a distinctly dewy green backbone and draws it back toward the original tomato-vine idea.

In the base, tomato returns in a softer, more rounded form. This is not meant to smell like a literal cooking tomato; rather, it suggests the smooth, watery flesh of a ripe fruit, mellowed by woods and berries. As with tomato leaf and blossom, the fruit effect must be composed. Fruity, green, watery, and subtly earthy aroma materials create an idealized tomato note—recognizable, yet polished enough to remain elegant in a perfume. Raspberry brightens it with red-fruit sweetness and a tart, candy-like glow. Because raspberry does not yield a conventional essential oil, this too is an accord, often built around raspberry-ketone-type effects and floral-fruity materials. It turns the tomato’s savory garden freshness toward a more youthful, mouthwatering sensuality.

Fig wood and fig leaf give the base its cool shade. Fig leaf smells green, milky, and softly coconut-like, with a sap-like quality that can recall the pale latex released from a snapped stem. Fig wood is drier and warmer: sun-bleached bark, faint creaminess, and quiet woodland depth. Neither is generally represented by a simple fig essential oil. Instead, perfumers combine green leaf materials, creamy lactonic notes, dry woods, and sometimes coconut-like nuances to create the familiar perfume image of a fig tree. These constructed elements allow the fig to feel simultaneously fresh and sensual, extending the garden theme from tender shoots to warm branches.

Myrrh provides the perfume’s understated ambered shadow. Its natural resin has a dry, balsamic, faintly smoky and medicinal character, with a bittersweet richness that keeps the fruit notes from becoming too sugary. Cedar adds a clean, dry woody note reminiscent of pencil shavings, cedar chests, and sun-warmed timber, while cypress brings aromatic evergreen needles, resin, and a cool, slightly smoky forest-air quality. Together, myrrh, cedar, and cypress give Liberté Acidulée a graceful foundation: they anchor its fizzy fruits, leafy tomato, and trembling flowers without compromising the scent’s freshness.

The effect is a bright, imagined garden in which natural citrus, herbs, resin, and woods mingle with expertly constructed tomato, blossom, berry, freesia, wisteria, nasturtium, and fig accords. The synthetic elements are essential to its charm. Rather than replacing nature, they make its most elusive scents—tomato vine, fragile flowers, ripe berries, and milky fig leaves—clearer, more enduring, and more playful on the skin.

 

 

Bottles:

Presented in a bottle designed by Garouste et Bonetti. The clear colored bottles came out in 2005 and replaced the lacquered bottles.

 

Fate of the Fragrance:

Discontinued, probably by 2010.