Viaggio in Italia

Jean Claude Hellena, Hermes’ prodigious smeller nose for more than a decade and totem of perfumery, defines himself as a pessimistic character and says that when he wakes up sad, melancholic, or restless, he takes the car and goes to Italy, just an hour and a half from his home near Grasse, the cradle of French perfumery: “As soon as I cross the border everything falls back into place. This country smells of happiness. A joie de vivre.” Perhaps a little tired of this back and forth between Provence and Italy, he decided to take a long trip through the country. He traveled it from north to south until he realized that he could only formulate when he was happy “with a blade of grass between my lips,” and he wanted to express that emotion with citrus chords that are “like the sun in winter”. Thus was born Viaggio in Italia, a collection of perfumes that has so far been translated into three installments—Mandarino, Bergamotto, and Neroli—and that the author has formulated in collaboration with Laboratorio Olfattivo, the temple of perfume in Turin that no one in their right mind would ever want to leave: wide brick vaults, rough limestone columns, marble and a spirituality in the atmosphere that permeates everything and that allows one to enjoy the jewels kept there with the necessary calm.

The joy of living, says Jean Claude Hellena. And he is right. If anything defines Italian perfumery today, it is the “gioia di vivere”, expressed through luminous, transparent, and absolutely organic fragrances, which exude vitality on all four sides and refer to a lifestyle that anyone would make their own without a second thought. The idea is not new. The first to export this joie de vivre, according to Jean Claude Hellena, was Giovanni Maria Farina, who, in 1709, created his famous Eau de Cologne in the German city of the same name with a formula that he himself defined as “a beautiful sunrise after the rain, a composition of oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bergamot, flowers, and fruits of my native country”. An unprecedented success that the rest of Europe sought to replicate in hundreds of formulas and that is still alive today. According to Abel Diaz, founder of the niche perfume agency Studio Smith, collaborator of the prestigious Pitti perfume fair, held in Florence (Italy), and a great connoisseur of Italian fragrances, it was Catherine de Medicis who was the great ambassador of Italian perfumes at the French court when she left Florence in 1553 to marry the heir to the crown, Henry II, and took her perfumer, Rene the Florentine, to Paris. “However,” says Abel, “I believe that the democratization of Italian perfumery occurred in the mid-20th century with the launch of perfumes such as Acqua di Selva, which were a huge success in Europe and helped consolidate what we now know as Italian perfume. The moment coincided with the boom of Capri and the Amalfi Coast, which at that time became a refuge for artists, writers, film stars, and the most important people of what was known at that time as the international jet set.

“Italian perfumery has a marked and unique character because it seeks to convey the idea of elegance but from a cheerful and Mediterranean point of view. And it does so with ingredients found in the surrounding geography, especially within the citrus family combined in an elegant and balanced way, far removed from baroque excesses of any sign. Two notes in particular—bergamot and neroli— are present in most Italian fragrances. However, there are other ingredients that, in my opinion, are unmistakably Italian, in particular jasmine and lavender and also some aquatic notes. The result? A much more casual and approachable perfumery than that of other schools. “It’s a cheerful perfumery,” Abel concludes. Surely an aromatherapy specialist would tell us that these ingredients—citrus, herbs, marine notes—are wonderful for lifting the mood. We could say that it is the perfect olfactory expression of “dolce vita”. “Yes, that one-of-a-kind style,” says Anabel Vazquez, co-founder together with María Martínez, of Laconicum, “related to outdoor life, Vespas, espadrilles, the deep blue sea, the cafés of the charming ports of the Amalfi coast, the wind, the pine forests, a way of life to which everyone aspires but which no longer exists.” It is of little importance that those images have been carried away by time and that now this area has become a meeting point for tourists who want to see with their own eyes—and experience as much as possible— the simple and luminous charm of those years. It is of little importance because, after all, Italy is much more than the Amalfi Coast and a new generation of perfumers is busy keeping the essence of joie de vivre intact. The state of health of Italian perfumery has never been better. Dozens of small firms with great faith in their work, heirs to a land rich in ingredients and a rich and varied tradition, have thrown their hat into the ring to create fragrances with local ingredients and simple formulations capable of conveying joy and well-being. This is the case of Viedeimille, a Sicilian brand that in the 1950s distilled flowers picked at dawn to be sent to French perfume houses and today formulates its own perfumes with the best ingredients from the island.

His first collection, Ianco (meaning white in Sicilian) is a tribute to Sicily and its most emblematic flowers—jasmine, neroli, almond—presented in very simple bottles and wrapped in a sleeve whose surface has been embossed with wonderful traditional Sicilian motifs. Or the commitment of Maurizio Lembo, heir to Officina delle Essenze, the perfumery his parents owned in Rome, who in 2001 embarked on the adventure of recreating the atmosphere and sense of well-being he experienced as a child through a line of perfumes that combines craftsmanship and luxury with spectacular success: Puro Lino, Puro Neroli, Puro Talco, and Puro Fico are fragrances that seek—and succeed—in preserving the enormous value of intimacy. Profumum Roma contributed its grain of sand with Acqua Viva, a perfume sparing in ingredients—citrus, juniper, and cedar—that sought its inspiration in the wind of the Aeolian Islands, located off the coast of Amalfi. Or even more established brands such as Acqua di Parma, has just relaunched Acqua di Pino, the recreation of one of its most emblematic fragrances created in 1950.

The sparkling character of Italian perfumery leaves no one indifferent, and the idea of contributing something to the gioia de vivere of Italian perfumery crosses borders and oceans. In 2011, Texan designer Tom Ford made an extraordinary contribution to this way of understanding life with his fragrance Neroli Portofino. “Tom Ford shares these values of simple elegance and natural joy to which the designer adds a sexy touch of his own, which is yet another variant of the hedonism of the area,” explains Abel Diaz. The French firm Atelier de Cologne also could not resist the temptation to participate in the story through Orange Positano, a sensory journey along the Amalfi coast that you never get tired of.

“But although this is the mainstream trend in Italian perfumery, it is not the only one,” clarifies Anabel. There are fragrances that evoke other emotions, like the proposals of perfumer Lorenzo Villoresi, for example. Alongside his more transparent perfumes, Villoresi formulates perfumes that draw on Mediterranean culture in its broadest sense, with ingredients such as woods or incense, which are much more difficult to digest, more mysterious, sometimes darker. They are baroque perfumes due to their enormous olfactory complexity that know how to find harmony within chaos. Another way of expressing the feelings, emotions, and history of this Mediterranean that gave birth to us.