Bvlgari Perfumes & Colognes

Nineteen bottles, split almost evenly between men’s and women’s. What makes this page different from every other designer house we carry is simple: Bvlgari is not a fashion label. It is a jeweller, and the fragrances are built like jewellery.

A Greek silversmith in Rome

Sotirio Bvlgari was a Greek silversmith who opened his first shop on Via Sistina in Rome in 1884. The spelling with a V is not an affectation — it is the classical Latin alphabet, which had no letter U, and the house has used it ever since as a nod to the city it settled in.

Everything followed from stones. Not fabric, not silhouettes: stones. And when the house started making perfume, it named the women’s line after them.

Omnia, named after gemstones

Five bottles on this page carry the Omnia name, and each one is a stone: Crystalline, Amethyste, Coral, Pink Sapphire, and the original Omnia itself. The scents follow the colour rather than the mineral — Crystalline is clear and watery, Amethyste is violet and powdery, Coral is tropical and sweet, Pink Sapphire is citrus and rose.

It is a genuinely useful system. Pick the colour you would wear and you will usually be right about the scent, which is not something you can say about most fragrance ranges.

Goldea and Rose Goldea sit above the Omnia line as the richer, muskier option.

The men’s side, in three groups

• Pour Homme — the Eau de Toilette, an Eau de Parfum, plus Extreme and Soir. Tea, powder and paper; the most restrained masculine fragrance on this site and the one that made the house’s name in perfumery.
• Aqva — Aqva and Aqva Marine. Salt, seaweed and mineral freshness, and a very different proposition from the usual aquatic.
• Bvlgari Man — four, including Man In Black, Wood Neroli and Wood Essence. The newest line and the warmest; Man In Black is leather and rum and by some distance the loudest thing here.

Blv, the cheapest bottle on the page, is a leftover from the early 2000s and worth a look for that reason.

Who this page suits

If you find most designer fragrance too sweet or too loud, start here. Bvlgari’s house style is cool, clean and quiet — closer to soap and stone than to dessert — and it is the range we would point at first for an office.

The eleven men’s bottles are under men’s cologne and the eight women’s under . For the same restraint at a higher price, Creed is the closest we stock.