MILAN — In 1992 Bulgari and master perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena disrupted the world of fragrance with Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert, an eau de cologne originally intended as an exclusive gift for the brand’s high-jewelry top clients but became the jewelry house’s first foray into the beauty arena.

It was an immediate sensation. Now, the Italian jeweler is going back to its beauty roots, reissuing the seminal fragrance and its sister scent Eau Parfumée au Thé Blanc — introduced in 2003 — as part of its new strategy for the category, which has seen the brand rationalizing both its offering and distribution.

“In the past few years there’s been a big work on refocusing on our house’s best-sellers, working vertically on lines like Omnia rather than launching new flankers,” said Valentina Colombo, managing director of Bulgari’s perfume business unit, in her first interview since assuming the position. Colombo joined Bulgari in November 2024 as global perfume marketing director, before being promoted to her current post in January.

The original Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert was pioneering in many respects: For one, its focal point was an ingredient — Japanese green tea leaves, quite an unusual one, especially for a Roman jewelry brand.

Its gender neutral juice was another point of difference in times when perfumery shelves neatly displayed a division between fragrances for women and men. So was its initial 350-ml. format, in contrast with the overall trend that favored smaller sizes to signal preciousness. 

Add on top a bottle design that, rather than falling into the cliché of having gem-like adornments, had Bulgari referencing its DNA with subtle sophistication via essential lines inspired by Roman columns and recalling a person’s neckline.

For more than 30 years these elements made Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert a pillar of perfumery and one of the most successful scents of the brand, which has since expanded its fragrance assortment with many other franchises, from the approachable Omnia range to the high-end Le Gemme line.

The relaunch of the Eau Parfumée line follows in the footsteps of the recent one of Bulgari Pour Homme, which was also introduced about three decades ago. The success of that relaunch, which was marked with a celebratory event in China in March, encouraged the company to replicate it for the Eau Parfumée duo.

“After that positive experience, we’ve now decided to retool our icon, the one that marked the first step of our pioneering heritage,” Colombo said. “It takes some audacity to [tweak] something like this, but we’ve been very lucky, too, because we did it benefitting from the technologies we have today.”

While keeping the juices recognizable, Bulgari reworked the fragrances from their original eaux de cologne into eaux de toilette that feature real extract of tea compared to the original formulations, which relied on recreating that effect synthetically. 

Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert now contains 94 percent natural-origin ingredients, layering the green tea extract with a floral accord of neroli petals and fizzy bergamot. Eau Parfumée au Thé Blanc and its woody floral musk scent based on white tea leaves from China was reintroduced as an eau de toilette containing 89 percent natural-origin ingredients.

The retooling of both fragrances was entrusted to master perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, who was also the nose behind the original Thé Blanc fragrance.

“So there’s a continuity, also because our goal was to rework them as little as possible,” Colombo said. “Our aim was not to change these fragrances but to enrich them by deploying tools that enabled us to do what we couldn’t do at the time.”

The glass flacon has been updated with few tweaks, too. These range from the cap set with a crackled inlay echoing the tradition of Chinese ceramic art and nodding to the fragrances’ Eastern inspiration to the label made from natural fibers and embossed with botanical illustrations.

“Now we are experiencing a wonderful moment because so much of this refocusing work has been done and today Bulgari’s fragrance business is really just another expression of the house,” Colombo said. “This is unique, because oftentimes, in other companies, perfumes are [developed] under license, which is totally different because interests involved are different. And the few houses that have it internally are sometimes too dependent on this business — which is not our case.” 

“Bulgari is strong in jewelry and watches, as well as growing quickly in accessories, and all this gives the fragrance unit a real freedom to return to our heritage and enhance creativity, without thinking about making big volumes,” Colombo continued.

To this end, she added that the plan is to move in two parallel directions. The first, traced by the Bulgari Pour Homme and Eau Parfumée relaunches, aims to breathe new life in existing pillars in order to perpetuate their longevity. The second is fostering new olfactory creations that could turn to be the icons of the future.

“My vision is to change the approach, from line to Maison,” Colombo said. “Today our size and the momentum Bulgari at large is experiencing allows us to continue this journey of elevation and therefore to work more [considering this category as] another facet of a polyhedric house, rather than as a business in itself.”

The two Eau Parfumée fragrances are available in 75-ml and 150-ml sizes, retailing at 120 and 184 euros, respectively. Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert is additionally offered in the signature 350-ml format, coming with a price tag of 450 euros.

The special 350-ml. size is available at all 350 Bulgari boutiques globally, whereas the other formats of the scents will retail at 47 stores out of Bulgari’s total units in the next two years, Colombo said.

Outside Bulgari’s stores, distribution will be limited, she added, sharing the plan to have a rollout at one-tenth of Bulgari fragrances’ current wholesalers, but declining to provide the exact number of total doors.

She also declined to share sales projections but industry sources estimate the Eau Parfumée duo to generate between 15 million and 20 million euros in sales in the first year since the relaunch. As for geographies, the fragrances are expected to resonate well in China, the U.S. and Europe, which are the top three best-performing markets for Bulgari fragrances at large at the moment.

Wholesale distribution has been particularly impacted by the rationalization plan of the company. Colombo said that now the wholesale footprint for Bulgari fragrances is roughly one-fifth compared to the one it had in 2019. That year, the company already started to drastically reduce its wholesale network, cutting 18,000 doors down to 6,000.

This channel is mainly destined for the more approachable lines like Omnia, while the high-end Bulgari Le Gemme is distributed at only 5 percent of the current wholesale network, Colombo said.

Cuts in the distribution went hand-in-hand with the refocusing of the assortment, “which today is one-fourth of what it used to be [in 2019],” Colombo said. In addition to the Eau Parfumée, Omnia and Le Gemme families, the main lines include Bulgari Pour Homme, Bulgari Man, Bulgari Allegra, Bulgari Aqua Pour Homme and Bulgari Rose Goldea.

Even if freed from the pressure of delivering big volumes, Colombo said she would like to “perfume different moments in the life of our clients” and would consider exploring other categories, starting from bath and body products. 

“In the past these were ancillaries conceived to secure more shelf space in perfumeries, but today customers have evolved…and this has become a category on its own, to be treated as such in terms of formulas and design,” she said. “These products have to be beautiful objects one wants to show at home and have to have interesting formulations, that go beyond being merely scented. So the stakes are higher.”

Colombo’s thinking and approach have been forged by her previous stints, including the one at fellow LVMH-controlled brand Acqua di Parma, where Colombo was formerly chief marketing officer and focused on propelling the Italian label’s brand building, digital evolution and global acceleration. Before that, in 2014, she joined Revlon as business development director in the luxury fragrance division, overseeing brands such as La Perla and Chopard.