On sultry summer days this year (there’ll probably be around, oh, fifteen of them in Seattle if we’re lucky), when someone asks me what sultry perfume I’m wearing, I’ll have a hard time saying (whispering?) “Juliet.” First, I don’t like Shakespeare’s annoying teen, the inspiration for this perfume, and secondly, Sweet Anthem Juliet,¹ the fragrance, does not remind me of virginal 16th century Verona girls. As I wear Juliet, I’ll be thinking of the South Pacific and Gauguin’s colorful images of half-naked men and women, flowers around their necks or in their hair, lounging near the sea. I wanted to use Gauguin’s painting, Jeune Homme à la Fleur to illustrate this post, but it’s not in the public domain, so the tattooed guy above will have to suffice (and I don’t think anyone would dare give him grief for wearing a perfume called “Juliet”).

Sweet Anthem, founded by perfumer Meredith Smith,² is an indie/artisan perfumery based in Seattle. Juliet combines many of my favorite things…

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