In 2006 Lorenzo Villoresi won the Prix François Coty, the career award for perfumers, sometimes described as the industry's Oscar. He took it as an independent, working outside the large fragrance groups.
He works from Florence, in a 15th-century family palace above the Arno. The house opened there in 1990.
Villoresi was born in 1956. His route into perfume ran through the Middle East, where a first trip in 1981 turned an interest in spices and essences into a study of distillation. Requests for bespoke fragrances followed, then a house, then a catalogue.
He also wrote about it. Il Profumo: Cultura, storia e tecniche came out in Florence in 1995, followed by books on bathing and a multi-volume series on the world of perfume. Perfumers who publish are rare. Perfumers who publish reference works are rarer.
His catalogue leans on places and myths. Piper Nigrum in 1999, Dilmun in 2000, Yerbamate in 2001, Alamut in 2006. Teint de Neige arrived in 2000, and it is the one that travelled furthest.
Teint de Neige is not a flower or a wood. It is powder. The house describes it as the Belle Époque, the rosy hue of a powdered face, the scent of perfumed powders and talc. That is an unusually literal brief, and the fragrance delivers it almost too well.
Which brings us to the part a shop is not supposed to tell you. Teint de Neige splits a room. People who love it wear nothing else. People who do not say it smells like a baby's changing bag or a Victorian dressing table. Neither camp is wrong. It is a powder scent, and powder is a taste, not a consensus.
So do not buy a full bottle of this profile blind. Test it on skin, leave it two hours, then decide. That advice applies to the original and to any interpretation of it, ours included.
Villoresi has since put the knowledge back into the city. Now Smell This reports he opened an academy and perfume museum in Florence in 2018, next to the atelier, with a botanical garden and teaching programmes attached.
For that soft powder profile without the Florence price, try Winter Veil in the 5ml extrait spray first, then size up if it suits you. The rest of the Lorenzo Villoresi-inspired range is here.
