Les Belles de Ricci: Cherry Fantasy (2005)

Les Belles de Ricci Cherry Fantasy by Nina Ricci was launched in 2005 as the pink, high-spirited addition to the Les Belles de Ricci family. Created by Aurélien Guichard, it was a fruity floral fragrance aimed at girls and young women of roughly fifteen to twenty—an audience the house understood as playful, emotionally intense, curious, and unwilling to be confined to one version of femininity. Following the romantic blue of Amour d’Amandier and the sunny orange spice of Délice d’Épices, Cherry Fantasy became “the Belle in pink”: jubilant, mischievous, full of surprises, and made for a moment of pure, carefree fantasy.

The name Cherry Fantasy joins two immediately evocative words. Cherry suggests glossy red fruit, sweet juice, candy, lipstick, flirtation, and a bright, almost mischievous innocence. Fantasy suggests imagination, make-believe, private dreams, escapism, and the freedom to become whoever one wishes to be. Together, the name feels deliberately sweet, colorful, and exuberant—a perfume title that promises a playful escape rather than a serious or formal statement.

Parfums Nina Ricci chose the name because it expressed the personality the Les Belles de Ricci collection had always celebrated: youth as a period of changing moods, laughter, romance, spontaneity, and self-discovery. Cherry Fantasy was not intended to portray a distant, polished ideal of womanhood. Instead, it spoke to the girl who could be affectionate one moment, impatient the next, and delightfully unpredictable throughout the day. Its pink identity made that message especially clear: it was the scent of silliness, confidence, daydreams, friendship, and the pleasurable drama of being young.

The perfume arrived in the mid-2000s, a period often remembered for its bright, glossy, hyper-feminine pop culture. Fashion embraced low-rise denim, tiny tops, velour tracksuits, platform shoes, rhinestones, metallic bags, candy colors, and an unapologetically decorative “more is more” attitude. Beauty followed suit, favoring lip gloss, shimmery body products, colorful packaging, and products that felt collectible, expressive, and fun. Teen pop, celebrity culture, and the growing influence of the internet all encouraged a more visible, playful form of self-styling, in which fragrance became another accessory for projecting a mood.

Perfumery of the period strongly favored fruity florals, sweet fruits, gourmands, soft musks, and cheerful, accessible compositions. Cherry, berry, peach, tropical fruit, vanilla, candy, and flower notes became increasingly familiar vocabulary for fragrances aimed at younger consumers. Cherry Fantasy therefore aligned closely with the mood of 2005: a scent concept designed to feel delicious, feminine, modern, and instantly understandable. Its use of cherry was not unprecedented, but it was particularly apt. Cherry has a dual character in perfume—at once innocent and flirtatious, juicy and cosmetic, bright and slightly suggestive—and that contrast made it ideal for the Les Belles de Ricci world.

For young women of the time, a perfume called Cherry Fantasy could have felt like a wearable pink daydream. It suggested the happy theatricality of getting dressed to go out, sharing secrets with friends, choosing a favorite lip gloss, or imagining romance before it has become complicated. In scent, the name implies a luminous fruity floral: juicy cherry given lift by fresh, sparkling notes; softened by petals; and perhaps rounded with a sweet, skin-close finish. It promises not a literal bowl of fruit, but an idealized cherry impression—glossy, colorful, cheerful, and touched with the whimsical imagination that made the Les Belles de Ricci fragrances so distinctive.

Fragrance Composition:

So what does it smell like? Cherry Fantasy is classified as a sparkling fruity floral fragrance with a watery-floral and soft musky base. Its citrus, raspberry, apricot, black currant, cassia, and nutmeg opening gives it a lively fruity-spicy brightness; cherry blossom, water lily, rose, and tangerine create a fresh, transparent floral heart; and bitter cherry, sour cherry, red berries, and musk form a tart-sweet, cherry-centered fruity-musky drydown.

• Top notes: grapefruit, bergamot, raspberry, grapefruit, apricot, black currant, cassia, nutmeg 
• Middle notes: cherry blossom, water lily, rose and tangerine
• Base notes: bitter cherry, sour cherry, red berries and musk

Scent Profile:

Cherry Fantasy opens in a sparkling rush of grapefruit and bergamot, two citrus notes that give the fragrance its bright, animated first impression. Grapefruit smells tart, juicy, and slightly bitter, with the vivid scent of freshly torn peel and a faintly mineral, sulfurous edge that keeps it from becoming merely sweet. Bergamot is softer and more refined: citrus peel warmed by sunlight, touched with green leaves, delicate flowers, and a whisper of Earl Grey tea. Together, they create the sensation of effervescent fruit soda or a gleaming pink cocktail, setting a lively stage for the perfume’s berry-and-cherry fantasy.

Raspberry gives the opening a soft red-fruit sweetness, at once tart, jammy, and lightly powdery. There is no conventional raspberry essential oil with the scent of the freshly picked fruit, so the note is built through an accord of fruity, floral, violet-like, and berry aroma materials. These constructed facets give raspberry its glowing, mouthwatering character and allow it to linger beyond the volatile citrus. Apricot adds a gentler golden softness, recalling velvety skin, warm flesh, and nectar. Like peach and many other stone fruits, apricot is generally recreated through lactonic aroma materials, which lend a creamy, sun-warmed, almost skin-like texture.

Black currant brings a darker contrast: the tart purple-black bite of berry skin, green leaves, and a faint wine-like tang. Natural black-currant-bud absolute can give this note a startlingly realistic green, sulfurous, cassis character, but it is extremely powerful and can become animalic if used heavily. Fruity aroma materials soften and amplify it, making it feel more luminous and youthful. Cassia then adds warm, sweet woody spice. It resembles cinnamon, but is fuller, darker, and more assertive, with a subtly lacquered, red-brown warmth. Nutmeg provides a drier, more aromatic spice note—warm, gently peppery, and lightly woody—so that the fruit accord has a playful sparkle rather than the softness of a simple fruit dessert.

The floral heart is clear and watery. Cherry blossom is an imagined scent rather than a straightforward natural essential oil: its fragile petals do not yield a practical perfume extract with the familiar impression of a blooming cherry tree. Perfumers therefore compose it from transparent floral, almond-like, rosy, and lightly fruity materials. The effect is delicate and airy, like pale pink petals scattered in a spring breeze, and it provides a graceful floral counterpart to the deeper cherry notes that emerge later.

Water lily adds a cool, aqueous floral effect, evoking petals floating on still water, wet green stems, and a clean, dewy breeze. Although botanical materials may lend texture to a water-flower composition, the recognizable “water lily” effect is largely created through modern floral and aquatic aroma chemicals. These materials are essential to its sense of clarity: they make the flower seem to hover over water rather than become dense, creamy, or overly sweet. Rose supplies a more familiar petal softness, its gently honeyed, rosy scent lending warmth and femininity beneath the translucent water-lily accord. Tangerine brightens this heart with a sweeter, sunnier citrus glow, less bitter than grapefruit and rounder than bergamot, as though the floral bouquet had been illuminated from within.

The drydown is built around two contrasting imagined cherry notes. Bitter cherry suggests dark cherry pits, almond-like kernels, glossy red skins, and a faintly liqueur-like depth. Sour cherry is brighter and more mouthwatering, with the sharp red tang of a freshly bitten Morello-type cherry. Neither note is usually obtained as a simple essential oil; they are composed through fruity, almond-like, floral, and sometimes liqueur-like aroma materials. A bitter-almond facet may suggest cherry stone, while sweet-tart berry materials provide the juicy flesh. The artistry lies in their balance: bitter cherry gives depth and intrigue, while sour cherry makes the accord feel vivid, tart, and mischievously fresh.

Red berries broaden the cherry theme with a glistening mixture of currant, raspberry, strawberry-like sweetness, and tart berry juice. This is another constructed accord, since the fresh scent of berries is too delicate and volatile to be captured by ordinary distillation. The resulting blend turns the drydown into a pink-red fruit haze rather than a literal cherry syrup. Finally, musk gives the perfume a soft, clean, skin-close finish. Modern perfumery uses synthetic white musks rather than the historical animal material; these can smell like warm skin, clean fabric, gentle powder, or a sheer creamy cloud. In Cherry Fantasy, musk smooths the tart fruit and delicate flowers, allowing the bright cherry accord to linger as a soft, youthful, intimate trail.

The overall impression is a fanciful pink orchard in spring: sparkling grapefruit and bergamot, ripe berries and stone fruit, a breeze through cherry blossoms and water lilies, then tart red cherries settling into clean musk. Its carefully constructed cherry, blossom, water-lily, raspberry, apricot, and berry accords are what give the fragrance its charm. They heighten nature into perfume—brighter, more radiant, and more enduring than the fleeting scent of actual fruit and petals.

 

Bottles:

Cherry Fantasy was presented in a pale-pink glass flacon shaped as the familiar Les Belles de Ricci spiral: a plump, curling coil that can resemble a coiled serpent, a twist of ribbon, or a soft swirl of strawberry ice cream. Designed by Elisabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti, its silhouette is deliberately more playful than traditionally elegant. It feels animated and slightly surreal, perfectly expressing the perfume’s cherry-bright, mischievous character and the collection’s invitation to approach fragrance with humor and imagination.

The pale-pink glass gives the bottle a tender, candy-colored appearance, recalling cherry blossom petals, rosy cheeks, fruit-flavored sweets, and the soft pink glow of a spring afternoon. Unlike a severe, sharply cut crystal bottle, this rounded form seems made to be picked up and turned in the hand. The press material’s invitation—“hold it” and “take it in your hands”—captures the flacon’s purpose: it is a tactile little object of pleasure, as cheerful and approachable as the young fragrance it contains.

A metallic-pink five-petalled flower stopper crowns the curling bottle, its petals arranged around a small central pistil. The stopper echoes a fanciful blossom perched atop the spiral, linking the bottle visually to the perfume’s cherry-blossom heart. Its gleaming metallic finish catches the light with the festive shine of a Christmas ornament, while its deeper pink tone contrasts gently with the paler pink glass below. Together, the pink coil and flower cap make Cherry Fantasy feel like a small dream-object: feminine, jubilant, and touched with the sweet, playful fantasy promised by its name.

Fate of the Fragrance:

Discontinued, date unknown, probably by 2010.