Eau d'Italie as seen in Caviar Affair Magazine...
...and available online at Beauty Frontier
Jasmine Leather by Eau d'Italie: La Dolce Vita - Eau d'Italie Le Sirenuse Positano captures the essence of Italy in a bottle
Growing up in Rome, as a child Marina Sersale spent summers at her family’s fabled resort, Le Sirenuse, in Positano on Italy’s Amalfi coast. One of her most cherished memories was of racing her sister and cousin, Antonio, barefoot on the hotel’s terrace, which was made of handcrafted terracotta tiles. They gave off a distinct mineral scent when heated by the warmth of the sun. Years later, that became the foundation of the first Eau d’Italie Le Sirenuse Positano fragrance.
Sersale’s family opened Le Sirenuse in 1951. They had a 60th birthday celebration planned in 2001, but 9/11 happened just weeks before, so the affair was canceled. The family still wanted to commemorate the hotel, so they decided to create a fragrance. At the time, Sersale was a documentary filmmaker and her husband, Sebastián Alvarez Murena, used to work in tobacco, so he had experience in scent, though neither had dabbled in perfume. The project landed in their laps, so they reached out to perfumers. “It was complete creative freedom, exploring a new world,” Sersale says. She wanted to capture that memory of racing on the terrace as a child, so the scent featured a mineral note of French clay, incense from the nearby church, black currant, and yellow sweet clover, one of the local wildflowers. “It really encapsulates Positano and Le Sirenuse in a bottle,” Sersale says. “It has a warm heart and a very fresh start.” Launched in 2004, they named it Eau d’Italie, which became the brand name for the collection of exclusive fragrances and body care products. After staying at the hotel, David Bowie became a fan of the scent.
Eau d’Italie now has 11 fragrances and they recently rejuvenated their packaging, in white refined yet contemporary lacquered bottles. Their new launch is Jasmine Leather, inspired by the Florentine art of scenting leather during the Renaissance. “Catherine de’ Medici introduced the art of scented gloves to the French court,” Sersale says. “The perfumer did something very special with these notes. She added elemi, a resin that comes from a tree, that adds a deep, zesty note to the top of the fragrance. She added saffron, giving it a mellowness. Sometimes leather and jasmine can be quite sweet, but ours isn’t. It’s zesty and fresh, quite exotic in the way she worked these notes together. Patchouli and cedarwood create a lovely dry down.”
Like all Eau d’Italie fragrances, Jasmine Leather instantly transports you to a specific time and place in Italy. Sersale says, “We are taking our clients on an olfactory journey to places that mean something special to us.”