Marina Sersale and Sebastián Alvarez Murena of the Le Sirenuse hotel in Positano talk about the Eau d'Italie niche line.
Eau d’Italie Un Bateau Pour Capri ~ new fragrance
Italian niche line Eau d’Italie will launch Un Bateau Pour Capri, a powdery fresh floral fragrance inspired by the famous guests — Grace Kelly, Liz Taylor and Jackie Kennedy — of the owner’s Positano hotel, Le Sirenuse…
Eau d’Italie Jardin du Poete ~ fragrance review
Based in Positano, its perfumes inspired by Italy — Baume du Doge (Venice), Bois d’Ombrie (Umbria), Eau d’Italie (Positano), Magnolia Romana (Rome), Paestum Rose (Paestum) and Sienne l’Hiver (Siena) — niche line Eau d’Italie’s fragrance names are in French (Perché? Do more people know how to pronounce French than Italian? Are French titles more “perfume-y”?) Eau d’Italie also uses a French perfumer, Bertrand Duchaufour, to create many of its fragrances, and I’ve enjoyed (almost) all of his Eau d’Italie perfumes (Magnolia Romana excepted).
Working with Eau d’Italie’s owners, Marina Sersale and Sebastián Alvarez Murena, Duchaufour supposedly took two years of “intense development” to create Jardin du Poète:
The inspiration for this fragrance is a tale from a bygone era, when nations were ruled by poets, and poets were sacred to Apollo. In those days Sicily was a Greek colony, Syracuse was a fragrant court, and its gardens vibrated with the scent of citrus orchards and rows of aromatic plants. Thus “Jardin du Poete”, the poet’s garden, a luminous fragrance to evoke Sicily and all things Sicilian.
It would require another article to tackle the confused notions expressed in that PR blip, but I’ll take Eau d’Italie at its word when it states it wanted Jardin du Poète to be “deliciously original and uncompromisingly contemporary.” Jardin du Poète succeeds on one of those two counts…
Eau d’Italie Au Lac ~ perfume review
Eau d’Italie released Au Lac just over a year ago, describing it as a feminine floral with top notes of water lily, bitter orange leaves, and panarea fig leaves; middle notes of osmanthus, rose bud, and sambac jasmine petals; and base notes of cedar wood, papyrus, and mineral amber. I was preoccupied with some non-perfume matters last spring, so I somehow didn’t get around to trying Au Lac until recently, although both its notes and its “back story” appealed to me. According to Eau d’Italie, this fragrance conveys the impression of “a gorgeous Italian garden at the height of summer, the air filled with the scent of flowers and the fresh waters of a lake” and was “inspired by the love affair between Italian Princess Vittoria Colonna and Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni.”
There isn’t anything particularly Futurist about Au Lac — what would a Futurist fragrance smell like? I’m imagining a mix of scorched rubber, hot metal, marble dust, and red wine — but the idea of a rendezvous in a sunny garden is definitely there. Au Lac opens with a lemon-tinged note of water lily petals. There’s also something lightly salty and bright in the initial phases of this fragrance, perhaps some unlisted neroli. The creamy lily petal note never really disappears, but it’s joined by a slightly warmer second phase of closely-knit floral notes. I caught a hint of osmanthus, which always reminds me of peach skin, but the jasmine is very subtle and not at all indolic. Au Lac’s garden-in-bloom development gains some structure from a greenish wood note (the papyrus?) and a light cedary base. Overall, Au Lac strikes a nice balance between clean and lush notes. I wouldn’t have minded just a touch more dirt in this cultivated landscape, but as it is, it’s a very appealing scent…
Eau d’Italie Sienne l’Hiver ~ perfume review
Eau d’Italie’s Sienne l’Hiver has been hanging around in my purgatory basket1 since it launched back in 2006. I’ve taken it out a few times to give it another shot, and then I’ve put it right back where it was. I don’t know what keeps me from moving it to the “no” pile. Perhaps it’s because so many people love it,2 or perhaps it’s because it’s by perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour? Or perhaps it’s because it is named for Siena. I try not to get too wrapped up in fragrance back stories — they so rarely resonate with the juice, and often that’s just as well — but Siena is such a lovely place, wouldn’t it be nice if it had a fragrance to match?
The sample hung around in my purgatory basket long enough that it got mostly used up, and what was left was rather stale, and who knows, maybe the stuff has been reformulated in the interim. (While it languished, Eau d’Italie redid their packaging; the bottles still look like functional products instead of luxury perfumes, but now they look a little more expensive). So I got another sample.
The opening is, briefly, cold air tinged with green, then it moves indoors, and we get a rush of sensations…