Pitti Fragranze

My first foray into international fragrance journalism(?)

In a couple weeks fragrance enthusiasts from around the world will converge in Florence for the annual Pitti Fragranze exhibition. If I can get my shit together in time, I hope to be one of them (yes, the fact that I don’t have a plane ticket or hotel booked yet is wild considering the event is like 10 days away. What can I say—I’ve been BUSY and I am BAD AT PLANNING.)

Fragrance conferences can be a bit of a mixed bag, in my limited experience (I’ve only been to one, the 2023 edition of ScentXplore). The good: you get to sniff a ton of new shit before it gets launched, which is exciting and special; you can talk directly with founders/creative directors/perfumers/other industry people, either as reps for specific brands or just hanging around at the event; there are samples galore—I am still going through samples I received at ScentXplore nine full months after the event; and perhaps best of all, a conference is an opportunity to hang out with other fragrance fans and yap about your favorite hobby without anyone’s eyes glazing over. The bad: these events can be overwhelming—I went nose-blind many times at ScentXplore; too much of a good thing can make you a bit cynical about the industry—I found myself growing despondent smelling a bajillion oud+rose and ambery vanilla gourmand fragrances one after another; the evidence of chasing trends rather than pursuing artistry is on full display when you’re in the presence of hundreds of fragrances in one place. There are also a bunch of influencers wandering around doing goofy things and sometimes getting in the way or monopolizing a booth, which can be a bad thing or a good thing depending on your perspective (it’s good people watching, at the very least).

Why Fragranze?

Better-informed fragrance friends tell me that Fragranze is the fragrance conference. If you can only go to one, this is the one to hit up. The curation is apparently above and beyond other exhibitions, which certainly seems true based on the exhibitors list on their website. There are a ton of favorites on here: Tauer Perfumes, Jorum Studio, Headspace, etc. And plenty of new-to-me entrants I can’t wait to check out: Réserve en Afrique (from Senegal), Mendittorosa (I’m a sucker for a weird cap), Bienaimé (I love a historic revival), just to name a few.

The fragrance curation is certainly the top reason for attending Fragranze, but there are plenty of other draws calling one there. For example, the event is held in a cool old train station:

via Stazione Leopolda

Way more gorgeous than any stateside event center. Also, Florence itself is a great city for a fragrance enthusiast—it’s where Santa Maria Novella hails from, after all.

See you there?

I applied for press credentials for Pitti Fragranze on a whim and to my surprise I was approved as a Member of the Press. The last step for obtaining them is submitting an application, which includes a link to an article about the exhibition, hence this post. I am hopeful that this time ten days from now I’ll be traipsing around Italy living out some sort of Dolce Vita fantasy.

If you’re going to Fragranze 24 please let me know! Let’s meet up and traipse together.

More soon <3