Deci Dela by Nina Ricci (1994)

Déci Dela by Nina Ricci, launched internationally in 1994 after development began in 1992, marked a decidedly spirited new direction for a house better known for romantic refinement. Nina Ricci itself was founded in Paris in 1932 by Maria “Nina” Ricci and her son Robert. Nina created feminine, beautifully cut couture, while Robert developed the fragrance side of the business; together they made the house synonymous with soft glamour, polished femininity, and French elegance. The company’s greatest perfume icon, L’Air du Temps of 1948, became a postwar symbol of peace and optimism. By the 1990s, however, Nina Ricci was looking to speak to a younger, more playful woman without losing its French sophistication.  

The name is properly written Déci Delà, a stylized play on the French phrase d’ici, de là, meaning “from here, from there,” or more freely, “here and there.” In everyday pronunciation, it is approximately deh-see deh-LAH. The phrase has a wandering, musical quality: it implies movement, variety, surprise, and something appearing from unexpected directions. Chosen by Parfums Nina Ricci executives from the French operetta Véronique, the name gave the fragrance an unmistakably French, theatrical identity while avoiding anything overly formal. It sounds like a flirtatious refrain—quick, bright, and impossible to keep still.

Déci Delà consequently evokes a scatter of vivid impressions: a basket of ripe fruit overturned on a velvet tablecloth; bright lacquered color; laughter moving from one room to another; silk dresses, theater lights, and a woman who changes the atmosphere simply by entering. It carries no hint of quiet reserve. Rather, it suggests spontaneity, sensuality, and a certain delicious excess. In scent, “here and there” becomes a series of lively contrasts: tart raspberry against velvety peach, sunny florals against cool moss, and sweet amber against dry green woods. The name prepares the wearer for a perfume that refuses to progress in a single, predictable line.

Created by Evelyne Boulanger and Jean Guichard, Déci Delà was presented as a harmony of three interwoven olfactory lines: fruit for youthfulness, flowers for warmth and development, and woods for softness. It opens with a juicy, exuberant fruit accord: peach, raspberry, melon, and the apricot-like suede fruitiness of osmanthus, animated by the floral, faintly tea-like character of boronia. This is a deliberately lush opening, closer to ripe fruit compote than to a discreet splash of citrus. The heart follows with centifolia rose, freesia, and aromatic hazelnut, giving the perfume a flirtatious floral warmth with a creamy, nutty accent. Its base—the most traditionally French part of the composition—draws on cypress, cedar, oakmoss, patchouli, and ambered chypre materials, creating a sweet, woody, slightly shadowed foundation beneath all that fruit. Contemporary references confirm the 1994 launch, the Boulanger–Guichard authorship, and the perfume’s fruit, flower, cypress, patchouli, resin, vanilla, and sandalwood structure.  

The timing was highly significant. The mid-1990s were a period of contrast: fashion was moving between minimalist, clean-lined dressing and exuberant color, slip dresses, club culture, playful pop imagery, and a growing taste for individuality. In perfume, fresh aquatics and transparent florals were enormously influential, and the new unisex ideal—exemplified by Calvin Klein’s ck one in 1994—favored simplicity, cleanliness, and casual ease. Fruity florals were also gaining ground, bringing peach, berries, apricot, and other juicy effects into more mainstream fine fragrance. Déci Delà clearly answered that appetite for fruit and brightness, but it did so with far more color and volume than a typical minimalist 1990s scent.

That distinction made it both contemporary and unusual. The opening followed the decade’s taste for vivid, youthful fruit, but its mossy chypre backbone and lavish, sweetly ambery drydown gave it a dramatic, almost old-fashioned French richness. A true chypre relies on the tension between freshness, flowers or fruit, and a warm, woody moss-and-patchouli base; Déci Delà kept that structure while dressing it in raspberry, peach, apricot-toned osmanthus, and melon. It therefore fell in line with the era’s fruity-floral trend, yet it did not become a simple light fruity floral. Its effect was fuller, sweeter, more theatrical, and more audacious.

For women in 1994, Déci Delà could have felt like an assertion of pleasure in a moment when fragrance was increasingly divided between clean minimalism and bold new sweetness. It was for the woman who wanted something more expressive than a watery floral: youthful, yes, but not innocent; feminine, but not fragile. Vanity Fair’s 1995 description of it as “original,” “audacious,” exotic, fruity, floral, and chypre captures that intention well. The bright flacons and lush scent were meant to feel almost edible and visually irresistible—an exuberant French perfume that moved, true to its name, from here to there and back again.

Fragrance Composition:

So what does it smell like? Deci Dela is classified as a crisp, fruity floral mossy chypre fragrance for women. It begins with a fruity top, followed by a fruity floral heart, layered over a sweet ambery base. Press materials read: "Deci Dela is called a harmony of three interwoven lines of scents - one fruity (youthful), floral (warm, developed) and woody (softness.) The eau de toilette is lighter and fruitier while the parfum is the warmest, most complex.  Succulent fruits in combination with floral accents make this fragrance a show-stopper.  Artful packaging contains a mixture of sensual delights with the unexpected punch of raspberry, cherry, peach, freesia and rose. Not for the faint of heart. In eau de toilette, concentrated eau de toilette and extract."

• Top notes: orange, mandarin, watermelon, pawpaw, cherry, red currant, raspberry, Chinese osmanthus, nectarine, apricot, peach, Australian boronia, Brazilian rosewood 
• Middle notes: hazelnut, freesia, headspace sweet pea, carnation, Javanese papaya, orris, freesia, jasmine, sweet pea rose, cabbage rose, ylang ylang
• Base notes: Sumatran balsam, myrrh, tonka bean, ambergris, vanilla, benzoin, amber, styrax, Cambodian agarwood, cedar, cypress, oakmoss, Mysore sandalwood, patchouli, resins, musk

Scent Profile:

Déci Delà is built as an exuberant fruity floral chypre: bright, juicy, and almost overflowing in its opening, then increasingly floral, creamy, and warm as it settles into moss, woods, resins, amber, and musk. Its three “interwoven lines”—fruit, flowers, and woods—are not separate chapters so much as strands braided together. The Eau de Toilette would emphasize the sparkling fruit and lighthearted floral movement, while the Concentrated Eau de Toilette would make the rose, freesia, and soft woods feel fuller and more persistent. In Parfum or extrait, the fragrance would become its most velvety and complex: less like a bowl of fresh fruit and more like fruit preserves, petals, ambered resins, suede-like woods, and warm skin.

The top is a riot of fruit, beginning with orange and mandarin. Orange gives the effect of freshly peeled fruit—sweet, sunny, and slightly bitter at the rind—while mandarin is softer, juicier, and more candied, like warm orange segments crushed between the fingers. Watermelon adds a transparent, watery sweetness, a cool pink-green freshness that is usually created with an accord rather than a literal fruit essence. The same is true of many of Déci Delà’s fruit notes: natural fruits often do not yield stable, usable perfume oils, so the perfumer composes their scent through a careful combination of natural materials and aroma chemicals. This makes it possible to suggest not merely “fruit,” but its juicy pulp, peel, tartness, fuzz, nectar, and freshness.

Pawpaw and Javanese papaya give the opening and heart an exotic, softly creamy quality. “Pawpaw” can refer to different fruits depending on region, but in a perfumery context it likely suggests a tropical papaya-like effect: musky, mellow, slightly green, and ripe. If interpreted as the American pawpaw, it may also evoke a custardy mixture of banana, mango, and melon. Papaya is likewise usually an accord, since the fresh fruit does not yield a straightforward perfume essence. Its constructed character can be made bright and watery, or rich and musky; here, it helps bind the melon and citrus to the warmer peach, apricot, and floral notes. It gives Déci Delà its feeling of abundant, almost tactile fruit rather than a simple citrus splash.

Cherry, red currant, and raspberry provide the fragrance’s more dramatic, brightly colored facets. Cherry is generally recreated with aroma materials that can suggest red fruit, almond-like pits, syrup, or a faint wine-like tartness. Red currant gives a sharper contrast: dark, tart, leafy, and faintly sulfurous, like crushed berries still on their stems. Raspberry adds soft red sweetness with a subtle jammy, woody, almost violet-like nuance. These notes create the “unexpected punch” described in the press material, making the perfume feel lively and almost reckless. Nectarine, apricot, and peach soften that red-fruit intensity with golden, velvety flesh. Peach and apricot accords are among perfumery’s great illusions: they may use synthetic materials to reproduce the ripe, creamy, skin-like quality that natural extraction cannot fully capture. The result is not artificial fruit candy, but the impression of warm, sun-ripened fruit with a plush, sensual surface.

Chinese osmanthus gives the fruit arrangement a more sophisticated, almost suede-like contour. Osmanthus from China is particularly prized because the small blossoms can smell simultaneously of apricot, tea, leather, and soft animalic fruit skin. It bridges the bright peach-apricot family to the deeper woods and resins that appear later. Australian boronia contributes another distinctive floral-fruity nuance. Its absolute is treasured for a complex scent that can suggest ripe fruit, violet, tea, fresh hay, and dark floral nectar; it is less conventionally “pretty” than rose or jasmine and gives the opening a beautifully strange depth. Brazilian rosewood adds a warm, rosy, linalool-rich woodiness—soft, floral, slightly spicy, and almost creamy. Historically, true Brazilian rosewood was highly valued, but because the tree has faced serious pressure from overharvesting, modern perfumery generally uses tightly controlled sources, substitutes, or reconstructed rosewood effects.

In the heart, the fruits begin to acquire flowers and texture. Hazelnut gives a soft, roasted, creamy facet, as though the fruit accords have been warmed into a delicate praline. It is usually a composed note, designed from materials that evoke nut skin, almond-like creaminess, and lightly toasted warmth. Freesia brings a clean, airy brightness: fresh petals with lemony, peppery, and watery floral facets. Sweet pea is even more ephemeral. The living flower does not yield a useful perfume extract, so its note is often created through headspace technology—a method that analyzes the scent molecules released by a living bloom without picking or damaging it—then recreated with a blend of natural and synthetic ingredients. Here, the headspace sweet-pea accord gives Déci Delà the smell of delicate, cool, pastel petals with a faint green stemminess, providing lift amid the richer fruit.

Carnation gives the floral heart its spicy, old-fashioned elegance: pink petals enlivened by clove, pepper, and a slight powderiness. As with sweet pea, the true living odor of carnation is more convincingly recreated through an accord than by a simple extraction. Orris brings a cool, luxurious contrast. Derived from the aged rhizome of iris rather than the flower itself, orris smells buttery, rooty, violet-like, and finely powdered—like pale cosmetics, suede gloves, and cool earth. Jasmine lends its creamier, more sensual side: white petals warmed by a faintly indolic breath, ripe fruit, and night air. Rose appears in several shades. The “sweet pea rose” effect would likely be a tender, airy rose accord, while cabbage rose—also called centifolia rose—brings a denser, honeyed, almost jam-like petal richness. Ylang-ylang enriches everything around it with golden, creamy, tropical floral warmth, suggestive of banana, custard, sun-warmed petals, and subtle spice.

The base begins with balsams and resins that transform Déci Delà from a fruit-floral fantasy into a warm, lingering chypre. Sumatran balsam likely refers to a balsamic material from Indonesia, valued for its smooth, sweet, resinous warmth. It gives the effect of polished wood, vanilla-tinted sap, and soft incense. Myrrh adds a dry, smoky, bittersweet resin note, slightly medicinal and church-like, which prevents the fruit from becoming too sugary. Benzoin gives a more comforting sweetness—vanilla-like, almondy, and balsamic—while styrax contributes leather, smoked resin, and a faintly floral amber effect. Together they create an ambery haze that feels almost lacquered: sweet but shadowed, rich but not sticky.

Tonka bean and vanilla deepen this warmth. Tonka, often associated with Venezuela and northern South America, is rich in coumarin, which smells of warm hay, almond, tobacco, and dry sweet wood. Vanilla gives darker, rounder sweetness: cured pods, brown sugar, rum, soft tobacco, and creamy balsam. Amber is not one raw material but an accord, generally built to suggest glowing resins, warm woods, golden sweetness, and a faint suggestion of skin. Ambergris contributes an airy mineral warmth—sunlit skin, a trace of salt, tobacco-like softness, and a dry oceanic radiance. Genuine ambergris is rare and variable, so modern perfumery normally recreates its effect with refined aroma materials. These lend diffusion and sensuality without making the base heavy or overtly animalic.

The woody chypre framework is especially important. Cambodian agarwood, or oud, gives the base a dark, resinous, faintly leathery wood effect, sometimes touched with smoke, damp earth, and medicinal balsam. Genuine agarwood is rare and precious because it forms only when certain trees develop fragrant resin in response to stress or infection; modern compositions often supplement it with reconstructed oud materials to give control, clarity, and sustainability. Cedar provides clean, dry pencil shavings and freshly cut timber. Cypress adds an aromatic, cool, evergreen quality—needles, dry twigs, and the brisk air of a Mediterranean grove. Mysore sandalwood contributes its celebrated creamy, milky, gently spicy richness; traditional Indian sandalwood from Mysore is revered for its depth and softness, though modern perfumes may reinforce it with sandalwood aroma chemicals to preserve and prolong its effect. Patchouli supplies the darker earth beneath the fruit: damp leaves, cocoa, camphor, and fertile soil.

Oakmoss gives Déci Delà its final, unmistakably mossy chypre shadow. It smells of forest floor, damp bark, lichen, old leather, and bittersweet green dryness. Modern formulas typically use purified, restricted, or reconstructed oakmoss effects in order to meet safety standards, but the intended result remains the same: a dry green counterpoint that makes the fruit feel more sophisticated and the amber more elegant. “Resins” reinforce the balsamic glow, while musk gives the entire perfume a soft, skin-like finish. Modern musks are synthetic and are valued not for a loud animalic odor but for their ability to make the fruit, flowers, woods, and amber feel seamless, warm, and persistent. In its final form, Déci Delà becomes precisely what its name promises: a perfume moving delightfully from here to there—bright fruit, cool flowers, powdery petals, dark moss, glowing resins, and a trail of ambered softness that is anything but faint-hearted.

 

Bottle:

Déci Déla was presented in a wonderfully theatrical bottle designed by Mattia Bonetti for the artist-design team Bonetti and Garouste, or BG. Its rounded deep-pink glass has a natural, pleasing fullness—more like a ripe piece of fruit than a conventional perfume flacon—and perfectly suits the fragrance’s exuberant fruit-and-flower character. The rich raspberry-pink color seems to hold flashes of cherry red and mandarin orange within it, while the frosted glass gives the surface the soft, slightly velvety appearance of peach skin. Fine dancing lines of gold enliven the bottle, turning its surface into something playful and decorative rather than severe or minimalist.

The stopper completes the fantasy. Finished in matte gold, it is shaped like a plump, gently inflated heart set at a jaunty diagonal angle. This slight tilt gives the bottle a feeling of movement and flirtation, as though the heart has just landed there. The combination of tactile frosted color, animated gold swirls, and eccentric heart-shaped closure captures the romantic yet mischievous character associated with Nina Ricci, while also reflecting the artful, postmodern spirit of the mid-1990s.

The coordinating bath line took a deliberately different visual direction. Instead of repeating the perfume’s fruit-colored glass, it drew on matte sea-blue and sea-green shades with the cheerful, optimistic charm of 1950s design. The soap dish was especially whimsical: shaped like a small flying saucer and supported on tiny gold balls, it turned an ordinary bath accessory into a playful object of decorative fantasy. The shower gel and body lotion continued this imaginative language, their plump golden-wave stoppers suggesting rippling water or soft folds of gold. Together, the bath line made Déci Déla feel like a complete little world—colorful, sensual, humorous, and touched with retro-modern glamour.

Product Line:

Déci Déla was offered in a generously layered range, allowing its juicy fruity-floral chypre character to be worn in different intensities and textures. Across the line, the scent would retain its recognizable signature of bright raspberry, cherry, peach, mandarin, and floral notes over warm amber, moss, woods, and soft musk—but each form would emphasize a different part of that progression.

The 5 ml Parfum Mini Splash and 15 ml Parfum Spray were the richest, most intimate forms. In Parfum concentration, the fruit would feel darker and more candied: less like freshly sliced peach and raspberry, more like warm fruit preserves touched with osmanthus, rose, and hazelnut. The floral heart would seem deeper and more velvety, with rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, carnation, and powdery orris closely woven into the skin. Its lasting impression would be the most complex and luxurious version of Déci Déla: sweet amber, balsams, vanilla, tonka, patchouli, oakmoss, sandalwood, and musk, with the fruit glowing softly within the base. The splash miniature would invite a small, personal dab; the spray would give the same richness a more enveloping, elegant aura.

The Eau de Toilette Concentrée—whether in the 1.2 ml sample spray vial, 5 ml mini splash, or 30 ml, 50 ml, and 100 ml bottles—would be the line’s fuller everyday expression. It would preserve more of the original fragrance’s fruit-and-flower drama than the standard Eau de Toilette, while remaining brighter and more mobile than the Parfum. The raspberry, peach, apricot-toned osmanthus, mandarin, and melon-like facets would appear quickly, followed by freesia, rose, sweet pea, and a gently nutty floral warmth. As it developed, the cypress, patchouli, oakmoss, cedar, and amber would become increasingly apparent, giving the scent a plush, mossy, sweet-woody finish. The sample vial offered a brief first encounter with that effect, while the miniature splash made it suitable for travel or a purse; the larger sizes allowed the wearer to make it a more generous personal signature.

The Eau de Toilette, available in 5 ml mini splash and in 30 ml, 50 ml, and 100 ml bottles, would be the freshest and most openly playful interpretation. It would place the emphasis on the perfume’s youthful fruit accord: the juicy brightness of raspberry and cherry, the soft fuzz of peach and nectarine, the sunny lift of mandarin, and the watery freshness of melon. Freesia and rose would seem lighter and airier, while the moss, woods, and amber would remain as a refined background rather than the main event. It would be the version most likely to feel carefree and spontaneous—ideal for daytime, warm weather, or liberal spraying—while still retaining enough oakmoss and patchouli to distinguish it from an ordinary fruity floral.

The Perfumed Dusting Powder would transform Déci Déla into a soft, cosmetic veil. Powders naturally emphasize dry, velvety, and floral elements, so the perfume’s sharper fruit notes would become gentler, like raspberry and peach lingering on a silk scarf rather than fresh fruit in a bowl. Orris, rose, freesia, warm amber, tonka, and musk would likely come forward, leaving the skin with a lightly sweet, floral-powdered finish. It would be especially lovely after bathing or beneath clothing, giving a subtle, luxurious trace of scent without the projection of perfume.

The Perfumed Body Crème would be the richest skin-care expression: smooth, warm, and cuddling. Its cream base would naturally soften the sparkling citrus and berry facets while amplifying the fragrance’s peachy, floral, ambery, and musky sides. It would smell like warm skin touched with fruit nectar, rose petals, vanilla-tonka sweetness, and pale sandalwood. The heavier texture would make it particularly effective beneath Parfum or Eau de Toilette Concentrée, helping the scent cling to the skin and making its woody-chypre base feel rounder and more sensual.

The Perfumed Body Lotion would provide a lighter, more fluid version of that experience. It would likely highlight the fragrance’s fresh fruit and floral elements—mandarin, peach, raspberry, freesia, and rose—while leaving a soft drydown of cedar, amber, and clean musk. Less dense than the crème, it would be ideal for all-over use, creating a delicate scented foundation that could be worn alone for a quiet effect or layered beneath one of the perfumes.

The Perfumed Bath & Shower Lotion would make Déci Déla feel clean, buoyant, and cheerful. Under warm water, the freshest notes would bloom most vividly: mandarin, orange, raspberry, peach, melon, and green floral facets. The richer resins, woods, and moss would appear only as a soft warmth left on the skin after rinsing, while freesia and rose would give the lather a polished floral character. It would turn bathing into the fragrance’s most lighthearted moment—bright, fruity, and sparkling rather than heavy.

The Perfumed Bath Pearls would offer a more indulgent, old-fashioned luxury. As they dissolved in warm water, they would release a softened version of Déci Déla’s fruit, flowers, and amber, scenting both bathwater and skin. The effect would likely be creamy and diffused: peach, raspberry, and rose mellowed by warm vanilla, tonka, amber, and gentle musk. Rather than projecting like fragrance, the bath pearls would leave a lingering impression of perfumed skin and a lightly scented bathroom, preparing the body beautifully for dusting powder, lotion, or Parfum.

Finally, the Perfumed Soap would present Déci Déla in its crispest, most polished form. Soap naturally brings forward clean floral, citrus, green, and powdery notes, so the first impression would likely be mandarin peel, airy freesia, rose, and a trace of raspberry-pink fruit. As the soap dried on the skin, it would leave behind a restrained suggestion of peach, pale woods, soft moss, amber, and musk. It would be a small but charming way to carry the fragrance’s playful world into everyday ritual: less a full perfume statement than a bright, elegant reminder of it.

 

Fate of the Fragrance:

Discontinued, probably around 1999.