Les Belles de Ricci: Delice D’Epices (1999)

Les Belles de Ricci Délice d’Épices was launched in April 1999 as the warmest and most adventurous member of Nina Ricci’s youthful Les Belles de Ricci collection. Created by Cécile Matton and Rosendo Mateu, it took the playful, mood-driven spirit of the original Les Belles de Ricci and translated it into a richer fruity-floral spice fantasy. Marketed to girls and young women aged approximately fifteen to twenty, it was intended for the moments when sweetness and freshness were not enough—when the wearer wanted something more daring, energetic, and a little mysterious. In Japan, it was called Secret Spice, a name that emphasized its intimate, intriguing character.

Délice d’Épices is French and means “delight of spices,” or more naturally, “spicy delight.” It is pronounced approximately, “day-LEESS day-PEESS.” The name immediately suggests sensory pleasure: warm pastries, candied citrus peel, glowing amber, exotic spice markets, and a deliciously fragrant kitchen. Délice implies something delectable and indulgent, while épices introduces heat, color, movement, and a touch of the unfamiliar. It is a name designed to make spice sound playful and tempting rather than severe or overly adult.

For Parfums Nina Ricci, this was an apt name for the “adventurous spirit” in the Les Belles de Ricci trio. If Amour d’Amandier represented tender romance and Liberté Acidulée expressed fizzing, tangy independence, Délice d’Épices gave youthful femininity a more unpredictable edge. It suggested a girl willing to experiment—with style, friendships, attraction, and her own developing sense of self. The scent was not meant to portray her as world-weary or conventionally seductive, but as lively, curious, slightly impertinent, and eager to be surprised.

The name evokes sunny orange and gold, spice tins opened at once, ripe fruit warmed by the sun, and a soft trail of vanilla and resin lingering on skin. It carries the emotional warmth of excitement: a flirtation, a party, a first trip without parents, or the heady feeling of discovering that one can be both sweet and bold. In fragrance terms, Délice d’Épices promises a scent with contrast—bright fruit against warm spice, tender flowers against peppery heat, and youthful sweetness resting on an enveloping oriental base.

Its fruity floral spicy gourmand-oriental structure fulfills that promise. Bitter orange and grapefruit give the opening a tangy, sparkling bite, while apple, blueberry, and peach add bright, colorful fruitiness. Chinese cinnamon, Ceylon cardamom, pepper, and Indonesian clove form the aromatic heart of the perfume, joined by carnation, orchid, and Egyptian jasmine. This creates the feeling of a floral bouquet warmed from within by spices: cinnamon’s sweet woody heat, cardamom’s cool aromatic lift, pepper’s lively tingle, and clove’s dark, carnation-like richness. The base—vanilla, toffee, benzoin, tonka bean, sandalwood, cedar, and benzoin—turns the composition softer and more sensual, with creamy sweetness, balsamic amber warmth, and dry woods beneath the fruit and spice.

Délice d’Épices arrived during the late-1990s turn-of-the-millennium moment, when youth culture, bright color, playful femininity, and individual self-expression were central to fashion and beauty. The era combined minimalism with a candy-colored, pop-influenced mood: platform shoes, denim, tiny tops, glossy makeup, cheerful accessories, and a growing appetite for beauty products that felt fun rather than formal. Fragrance houses increasingly recognized teenage girls and young women as a distinct audience, offering perfumes designed around personalities and shifting moods instead of presenting a single polished ideal of womanhood.

In perfumery, the fragrance followed an important late-1990s movement toward sweeter, more edible scents. The impact of gourmand perfumery—especially after Thierry Mugler’s Angel—had made vanilla, caramelized effects, fruits, confectionery notes, and warm amber bases increasingly desirable. Délice d’Épices belonged to that trend through its toffee, vanilla, tonka, benzoin, and fruit notes, but it softened the genre with florals and energized it with a vivid spice accord. It was less dark and patchouli-heavy than the grand gourmands of the decade, and lighter in spirit than many traditional oriental perfumes.

It was therefore not wholly outside the trends of 1999; rather, it was a youthful, colorful interpretation of them. Its gourmand warmth, fruit, and vanilla aligned it with the growing taste for delicious fragrances, while its unusually prominent cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, and clove gave it a more animated personality than many sweet floral launches aimed at teenagers. In the Les Belles de Ricci wardrobe, Délice d’Épices was the sunny-orange mood: voluptuous, lively, and fragrant with the pleasure of taking a small, exciting risk.

Fragrance Composition:

So what does it smell like? Delice D’Epices is classified as a fruity floral spicy gourmand-oriental fragrance for women. Its bright bitter-orange, grapefruit, apple, blueberry, and peach opening gives it a juicy fruity-floral freshness, while Chinese cinnamon, Ceylon cardamom, pepper, Indonesian clove, carnation, orchid, and Egyptian jasmine create a warm, aromatic spiced-floral heart. The base of vanilla, toffee, benzoin, tonka bean, sandalwood, cedar, and benzoin gives it its gourmand, ambery, woody oriental character.

• Top notes: Seville bitter orange, grapefruit, apple, blueberry, peach 
• Middle notes: Chinese cinnamon, Ceylon cardamom, pepper, Indonesian clove, carnation, orchid, Egyptian jasmine
• Base notes: Virginia cedar, Mysore sandalwood, Madagascar vanilla, toffee, Siam benzoin, Venezuelan tonka bean

Scent Profile:

Délice d’Épices begins with a bright, juicy burst of fruit, but it is never simply sweet. Seville bitter orange provides the opening’s lively edge: an aromatic bitterness of sun-warmed peel, green twigs, and marmalade-like citrus. The fruit, associated with Seville in southern Spain, is prized for the intense, dry bitterness of its peel, which is more complex and sharply aromatic than ordinary sweet orange. Grapefruit adds a brisk, slightly sulfurous sparkle—the scent of freshly torn rind, tart juice, and a faint mineral bitterness. Its natural oil gives immediate brightness, while fresh citrus aroma materials can reinforce its radiance and prevent the opening from fading too quickly.

Apple gives the top a crisp, watery sweetness, like biting through cool pale flesh beneath a clean, waxy skin. Blueberry adds a darker, soft blue-violet fruitiness: gently tart juice, berry skin, and the suggestion of crushed fruit. Peach lends a more velvety sensation, with the warmth of fuzzy skin, golden flesh, and ripe nectar. Apple, blueberry, and peach do not yield conventional essential oils that preserve their recognizable fresh-fruit scent, so each is created as a perfumer’s accord. Green, watery, floral, fruity, and creamy aroma chemicals supply their realism: apple becomes crisp rather than sugary; blueberry acquires a luminous berry bloom; and peach gains its plush, skin-like softness through lactonic materials. These constructed fruit notes give the fragrance its youthful, colorful lift and prepare the skin for its warmer spice heart.

Chinese cinnamon introduces the first glow of spice. Usually referring to cassia, it has a bold, sweet-woody, almost lacquered heat, driven by its naturally high cinnamaldehyde content. It is more forceful and darker than the delicate, finely layered true cinnamon traditionally associated with Sri Lanka. Ceylon cardamom provides a beautiful counterpoint: cool, aromatic, and green, with nuances of eucalyptus, lemon peel, sweet wood, and warm spice. The pairing makes the fragrance feel animated rather than merely sugary—cinnamon gives it warmth and richness, while cardamom allows light and air to move through the composition.

Pepper supplies a dry, sparkling tingle, like freshly cracked black pepper scattered over ripe fruit. It is not primarily fiery; in perfume it gives lift, movement, and a subtle nose-tickling brightness. Indonesian clove deepens the heart with a darker, more voluptuous spice. Clove oil from Indonesia is especially valued for its rich eugenol content, which gives it an intense warm scent of clove buds, carnation petals, sweet wood, and faint medicinal smoke. Its spicy floral character naturally echoes carnation, lending the heart a red-flowered warmth that feels at once elegant and slightly mischievous.

Carnation itself adds a ruffled floral effect, rosy and powdery but threaded with pepper and clove. Its familiar perfumery character is usually built as an accord rather than obtained from a widely used carnation essential oil; eugenol-like spice materials, rose facets, floral notes, and soft powdery ingredients create its lifelike petal-and-spice impression. Orchid contributes a more elusive floral softness—creamy, velvety, faintly sweet, and mysterious. Orchids do not normally yield a practical distillable essence for perfumery, so the orchid note must be composed from floral, vanilla-like, powdery, and sometimes lightly fruity aroma materials. This imagined orchid gives the spice accord a smooth, plush surface.

Egyptian jasmine brings the heart to life with a warm white-floral sensuality. Jasmine cultivated in Egypt has long been prized for its generous, sun-rich character: a lush scent of white petals, sweet tea, ripe fruit, and a delicately indolic depth that can recall warm skin and night air. Its absolute lends natural fullness to the formula, while jasmine aroma materials may heighten its radiance and diffusion. The contrast between jasmine’s creamy floral glow and the dry heat of cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, and clove is what gives Délice d’Épices its “spiced floral” character rather than making it smell solely of a dessert or spice cabinet.

The base begins with Virginia cedar, a material that is not technically a true cedar but the aromatic wood of the eastern red cedar, a juniper native to North America. Its scent is dry, pencil-shaving-like, clean, and slightly smoky, with a faintly leathery edge. It gives the sweeter ingredients a tailored woody backbone. Mysore sandalwood adds the opposite texture: creamy, warm, softly spicy, and almost buttery, with a gentle rose-like floral undertone. Sandalwood from the Mysore region of India became the historic benchmark for Santalum album oil because of its exceptionally rich, smooth, long-lasting character. In modern perfumery, this precious natural material may be supported by sandalwood aroma molecules, which preserve its creamy radiance and help it remain present throughout the drydown.

Madagascar vanilla gives the fragrance its most comforting sweetness. Often associated with Bourbon vanilla, Madagascar-grown Vanilla planifolia is prized for its deep, rounded profile: sweet cured pods, dark cocoa, dried fruit, balsam, and rum-like warmth. Natural vanilla absolute offers this complex shadowed richness, while vanillin and related aroma materials brighten and extend the familiar creamy vanilla effect. They make the vanilla seem to glow through the spices, fruits, and woods rather than settling heavily at the bottom.

Toffee adds the scent of warm caramelized sugar, buttered confectionery, and a faint toasted nuttiness. It is an imaginative gourmand accord rather than a natural perfume extract, built from caramelic, lactonic, vanilla-like, and lightly roasted aroma materials. In Délice d’Épices, it makes the fruit and spice feel deliciously edible without reducing them to literal candy. Siam benzoin contributes a softer, balsamic sweetness. Traditionally associated with Styrax tonkinensis from mainland Southeast Asia, including Laos and Thailand, Siam benzoin is prized for its unusually smooth, vanilla-like, almondy character. Its resinous warmth links the toffee and vanilla to the woods, producing a gentle amber glow.

Venezuelan tonka bean completes the base with the scent of warm hay, almond, tobacco, vanilla, and freshly cut wood. Tonka beans are naturally rich in coumarin, the aromatic constituent responsible for their hay-like, sweetly ambery character. Natural tonka extracts can bring wonderful depth, while purified or synthetic coumarin can sharpen and prolong the note with greater consistency. Here, tonka gives the vanilla and benzoin a dry, elegant contrast, stopping the gourmand accord from becoming too sticky or dense.

The result is a perfume built on delicious contrast: tart Seville orange and grapefruit against soft fruit; fresh cardamom and pepper against glowing cinnamon and clove; creamy jasmine and orchid against dry cedar; and caramel-like toffee and vanilla against balsamic benzoin, tonka, and sandalwood. Its natural extracts provide texture and depth, while its carefully composed fruit, carnation, orchid, and toffee accords supply the clarity, color, and lasting fantasy that make Délice d’Épices feel warm, exuberant, and irresistibly playful.

 

Bottles:

Délice d’Épices was presented in a vivid sunny-orange flacon, a buoyant spiral of lacquered glass shaped like a plump coiled serpent. Its rounded, curling form can also suggest a twist of ribbon, a piece of candy, or a generous swirl of orange ice cream—exactly the sort of playful fantasy that suited the Les Belles de Ricci collection. Designed by Elisabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti, the bottle transforms the perfume’s warm, spicy-gourmand personality into a small sculptural object: cheerful, tactile, slightly surreal, and full of movement.

The luminous orange color reflects the fragrance’s character beautifully. It calls to mind bitter-orange peel, peach skin, cinnamon warmth, cardamom, clove, and the caramelized sweetness of toffee and vanilla. Bright rather than dark, it suggests warmth, excitement, and adventure—the sunny-orange “emotion” assigned to Délice d’Épices within the three-scent collection. The lacquered glass makes the color feel rich and almost velvety, softening the hard clarity normally associated with glass. Held in the hand, the rounded flacon has a sensual, voluptuous presence, inviting one to turn it and feel its smooth, curving coil.

A metallic-blue stopper crowns the orange spiral in the form of a five-petalled flower arranged around a central pistil. Its cool, polished blue contrasts dramatically with the bottle’s glowing orange body, like twilight against a warm spice market or a blue ribbon tied around a bright confection. The metallic finish catches the light with the festive shine of a Christmas ornament, while the flower form adds a touch of youthful femininity to the deliberately eccentric silhouette. Together, the orange coil and blue blossom create a bottle that seems to embody the fragrance itself: sweetly spiced, colorful, energetic, and far too playful to inspire melancholy.

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

Fate of the Fragrance:

Discontinued, date unknown, probably by 2010.