Flashing back to childhood, perfumers often find inspiration in the sweet embrace of their mother’s favorite fragrance. Italian nose Alessandro Gualtieri has no such memory. Instead, he draws on the primal blood and guts of his father’s butcher shop in Milan and the earthy odors of his grandfather’s garden, fertilized the old-fashioned way.
“There is no good or bad, there are just the elements,” explains the Amsterdam-based renegade, whose mamma didn’t wear perfume. “I’ve always been attracted to dirt, animal notes, stinky notes, human-body smell, whatever. I’m not much using roses,” adds the 49-year-old with a laugh.
In a market flooded with celebrity scents and designer “flankers,” Gualtieri rejects the clichés of aspirational marketing. He relishes ingredients that reek — molecular versions of horse pee and dung — and uses small amounts to add depth and richness to compositions. He will go to unusual lengths in pursuit of an olfactory objective, once asking prostitutes in Amsterdam’s red-light district to test-drive options and report back on their clients’ preferences. (A heady jasmine floral got the best rise and became “Narcotic V.”)
“The brands that Alessandro creates are completely unlike anything anyone has smelled before,” says Jennifer Miles, vice president and divisional merchandise manager for cosmetics at Barneys, which carries his two unisex scent lines: Nasomatto (Italian for “crazy nose”) and Orto Parisi (honoring his grandfather, Vincenzo Parisi, a farmer). “They push the boundaries of traditional fragrance and are all quite unique and beautiful.”
It wasn’t always this way. Gualtieri spent eight years toiling at mainstream fragrance suppliers in Europe. Frustrated by the commercial restraints, he left in 1995 to do his own thing. He started with Nasomatto, now an array of 11 “addictive” scents. “Black Afgano,” redolent of a potent type of hashish available in Amsterdam’s coffee shops, is the smoky best seller at Barneys. And then there’s “Baraonda,” a bourbon-y blend that he sniffed (and swigged) in the making — not that he’s suggesting anyone drink it.
Orto Parisi is a six-scent homage to his grandfather, who fertilized his crops with human waste. “Stercus,” the Latin word for feces, is its unlikely leader at Barneys. “This scent is complex, animalic, smoky and very sexy,” says Miles. The musky “Seminalis” — spawned by a science paper that describes the chemical attraction between egg and sperm — came this spring.
What exactly goes into his handmade potions? No one knows, since Gualtieri scoffs at the idea of listing ingredients the way his competitors do. “It’s so boring. Who cares?” His attitude is either you like it or you don’t.
Turns out many do. His surprisingly elegant and warm perfumes have developed a cult following.
“I do what is close to my heart,” says Gualtieri, “and then I share it.”