Bvlgari Parfums managing director Valeria Manini said Bvlgari’s new men’s fragrance, Aqva Amara,1 a flanker to 2005’s Aqva Pour Homme, was:
…part of a larger strategy to promote the best-selling Aqva and Omnia lines as high-end creations “developed for a larger audience…. We are working very hard to try to elevate what are considered the ‘entry’ product lines. There are two possible approaches here: either you treat the fragrance as a big commercial blockbuster, or you say, no, we want to treat this like a very precious object.”2
The trouble with this strategy, when it comes to the Aqva line at least, is that the perfumes don’t smell “high-end.” Original Aqva Pour Homme has its moments, but it smells more like a blockbuster wannabe than an expensive niche creation…
