Juliette Has a Gun Not a Perfume Dupes: 6 Cetalox Alternatives, Compared on Notes and Price

Dua sells this as a single ambroxan note at a stated 33.33% concentration in a 34ml extrait bottle, and names Not a Perfume in the title as the thing it replaces. Structurally that is the right answer. Not a Perfume is Cetalox and nothing else; #NoPerfume is Ambroxan and nothing else, and those two names describe essentially the same amber material from different producers.

What you gain is wear time. The loudest complaint about the original, running through Space NK's 70 reviews, is that it evaporates. An extrait carrying roughly three times the aromatic load does not have that problem, and if you have been quietly resenting a $150 bottle for going silent by lunch, this answers that specific grievance.

What you lose is the trick. Half the point of Not a Perfume is that nobody can locate it on you. #NoPerfume sits closer to the surface and behaves more like a fragrance. If you were using the original as a base layer under something else, expect this one to argue with the top notes rather than smooth them out.

The honest gap in the evidence: Dua prints no ingredient list, only the note. Every number on that page is the brand's own, unverifiable from outside.

Molecule 02 does what Not a Perfume does: one amber molecule, alcohol, water. Escentric's copy says the fragrance consists of the molecule Ambroxan pure and singular. Space NK prints the ingredient list as Alcohol Denat, Water, Parfum (Fragrance), and the brand's list for Not a Perfume reads 74% vol. alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water). Cult Beauty goes further and prints Ambroxan in the list itself. On paper that is as close as two fragrances from two houses ever get.

Then the price. Escentric's US store lists 100ml at $170. Juliette Has a Gun charges $150 for 100ml direct. The dupe costs twenty dollars more. In the UK the gap narrows without reversing, £125 RRP against £140, with Cult Beauty discounting to £100 on the day I checked.

So this is not a saving, and I would rather say so than pad the list. It earns a place because Escentric sells the idea in small sizes that nobody else here matches: a 2ml sample set at $55, a 30ml refill at $85, and an ATOM.ISER refill of three 8.5ml cartridges at $65. If you want to test the single-molecule concept properly before committing $150 anywhere, that is the cheapest route in.

Dossier is the only bottle here that puts Cetalox at the front of its own note pyramid, and the only one that lands the price somewhere a reasonable person would spend it. $49 buys 100ml, which works out at $14.41 an ounce against $44.12 for the original. The 50ml is $32, and the EU site lists that size at €29, out of stock when I checked.

The formula is not a copy and Dossier does not pretend otherwise. The middle is Cetalox and Iso E Super; the base is Habanolide and musks. Iso E Super is the Molecule 01 material, peppery and dry-woody and much easier for most noses to register. Habanolide is a clean macrocyclic musk, the one that does soft laundry. Together they give Musky Musk something Not a Perfume actively refuses to have, which is a describable smell coming out of a bottle.

That reads as a gain or a loss depending on why you wanted the original. If it was the near-invisibility, this is a step away from it. If it was the warm ambery skin effect and you were tired of the silence, this is better value than the thing it copies, by a wide margin.

One flag for reactive skin. Dossier's list is alcohol, water, parfum and limonene. The Juliette Has a Gun list declares no allergen, and that is a real part of its pitch.

Oakcha's version is the one I would hand to someone who layers. It is sold as an extrait, stated at 30 to 40% aromatic compounds, with ambergris top and heart and a base of amber, ambergris and ambroxan. The ingredient list runs Alcohol Denat., Parfum (Fragrance), Aqua (Water), Ethylhexylglycerin: four items against the original's three, and neither declares an allergen.

$36.95 for 50ml puts it at $21.74 an ounce, roughly half the original's rate and squarely mid-pack in this group. The 449 reviews on Oakcha's page average 4.7. Oakcha also prints Not a Perfume's retail price on its own page as $110, which is not what Juliette Has a Gun charges for 100ml, so treat the comparison framing there as marketing rather than data.

The useful caution is Oakcha's own intensity label, which reads subtle. That is honest of them and also the reason to think twice. If you already found Not a Perfume too quiet, an extrait the brand itself calls subtle is not your answer and Dua's is. If you liked the quietness and simply wanted more of it for less money, this is the cleanest swap on the list, and 50ml means a mistake costs $37 instead of $150.

This one needs a correction before anything else. Several dupe roundups list Simply Another as ALT's clone of Not a Perfume, including the Osmoz piece that ranks it first and calls it a replica of the Juliette Has a Gun. ALT's own product page says it is inspired by Le Labo's Another 13. Those are different targets, and the difference is audible: ALT's own description puts pear, a cashmere accord, warm muskiness and a dry woody sugar over the ambroxan.

It still earns a place, because the spine underneath is the same amber material and because 748 reviewers have scored it 86.5 out of 100 on ALT's page. If what draws you to Not a Perfume is the warm amber-against-skin effect rather than the emptiness, this is the affordable route into a richer version of that idea.

The sizing is where it turns awkward. ALT charges $49 for 30ml, which the brand itself rounds to one ounce, so you are paying about $49 an ounce, more than Not a Perfume costs per ounce at retail. Only the 60ml at $59 makes arithmetic sense. And ALT's ingredient list declares Benzyl Salicylate, so the allergen-free reason for buying the original does not survive the swap.

The shared part is real and printed on Glossier's own page: You's base is listed as Ambrette plus Ambrox, and Ambrox is the same amber material wearing a different trade name. WhatScent's round-up of Not a Perfume alternatives names You for the same reason, describing both as leaning on molecular materials to sit close to the skin.

What sits on top is not shared at all. Pink pepper opens it, iris runs through the heart, and the result has a face. People will tell you it smells nice, which more or less never happens with Not a Perfume.

That body is the argument for it. A single-molecule scent has nothing underneath to slow its evaporation, and You has iris and ambrette doing exactly that job. If your bottle of the original has been vanishing in forty minutes, this is the version that stays put.

Two honest marks against it. At $116 for 100ml against $150 you save 23%, and a 23% saving is a discount, not a dupe; the 8ml at $32 is the sensible way to test it. And Glossier's list runs Alcohol Denat., Fragrance, Water, Hydroxycitronellal, Farnesol, Limonene. If you chose Not a Perfume specifically because its list declares no allergen, this undoes the reason you chose it.