Part of Profumum Roma’s identity lies in its ability, cultivated over thirty years of consistency, to capture in a fragrance a landscape, a memory and a precise way of looking at the world.
Acqua Viva, Roma Kyoto, Sorriso di Dea. Profumum was founded in 1996 out of the wish of Giuseppe, Luciano, Maria and Felice Durante to carry forward a family story that began with the knife grinders of Sant’Elena Sannita and arrived in the perfumeries of the capital. Creations able to reconcile identity and evocation. Names and notes conceived to open up a space, stir memories and bring back to light sensations long hidden. Sensations that only the right scent can bring back to the surface.
It is along this path that Auriga was born, inspired by one of the most ancient and absolute images there is: the sun.
Bergamot, sandalwood, patchouli and vanilla. Around this composition, Profumum Roma and Bliss worked together on a launch that begins long before the bottle appears and evokes myth, youth and daring. A narrative that, from the memory of the harvest to the story of Phaethon, moves through matter and experience.
Let us retrace it together.
The unmistakable scent of the sun
If the sun had a scent, what would it be?
This is the question from which work on the new fragrance began. The answer took shape in an intimate, familiar memory: the midsummer harvest in the countryside of Sant’Elena. That moment when the wheat was ripe, the earth dry and the village gathered around the same work, before the silence of the hours when the sun brought everything to a standstill.
That scent belongs more to memory than to language. Describing it would not have been enough. And so the earth itself was called upon to provide its substance, with the sky there to widen its horizon.
The myth and the memory
Auriga is the Latin name of the northern constellation of the Charioteer.
For the launch, this figure found its face in the myth of Phaethon, the son of Helios who asked his father to drive the chariot of the sun for a single day. In the Latin tradition, Phaethon mounts the chariot despite the warnings. The divine horses, however, soon escape his control. And so the course veers first too high, then too close to the earth, causing natural disasters.
Jupiter, forced to intervene, halts his course with a thunderbolt, before turning the young man into a constellation.
The tension, told by Virgil and Ovid among others, represents the power of the sun, as capable of giving life as of consuming it. Ambition, responsibility, maturity and destruction all coexist in the story of anyone who tries to govern something greater than themselves.
The launch of Auriga holds together this cosmic dimension and the concrete memory of the harvest. On one side, the field, the labour and the heat on the skin. On the other, the chariot, the stars and the fire. Two stories that meet in the fragrance and become essence.
A story in acts
To present Auriga to the public, Bliss drew on some of the forms of ancient tragedy: the Prologue, the Parodos, the Episode and the Exodos. This structure gave the campaign a precise rhythm, allowing the story to unfold gradually.
The Prologue introduced the mystery. The product remained off-screen and the whole space was given over to the sun, the earth and a question still without an answer.
The Parodos brought the central themes to the stage, revealing the name of the new scent.
The Episode brought the myth closer to the physical form of the fragrance.
The Exodos, finally, gathered what had been sown in the earlier phases, turning it into revelation and celebration.
Each stage narrowed the distance between the audience and the product. In the first weeks, Auriga lived as atmosphere, image and anticipation. The bottle appeared only when the audience already had what it needed to recognise its world.
The Brand Strategy preceded every executive decision. First, the meaning, rhythm and boundaries of the story were defined. Images, words, materials and experience then followed the same direction.
Le Notti di Auriga
The event conceived for the launch translated the same architecture into a real space.
Le Notti di Auriga was designed for a small group of guests, inside a farmhouse surrounded by fields. The experience unfolded in three movements.
The first is sunset, entrusted to memory: golden hues, the story of the harvest and the voice of a narrator. The second is twilight, which leads guests along an olfactory path to the unveiling of the bottle. The third is night, when the story turns to the sky through a dinner inspired by the stars of the constellation and the presence of an astronomer, who restores Auriga to its place above the guests.
The Scrigno di Auriga
The gift conceived for the event was the Scrigno di Auriga, designed to carry the same narrative progression into material form.
On the outside, the dark wood bears only the name, hot-stamped in burnt gold. Opening it leads to the story of the harvest printed on parchment, to natural elements recalling the earth and the wheat, and to a map of the constellation. The bottle appears only at the end, wrapped in midnight-blue velvet.
The sequence guides the recipient from earth to sky, following Phaethon’s journey to the sun captured in the fragrance. Opening the casket means passing through anticipation, experiencing discovery and feeling the weight of the revelation. The experience then continues on the skin, where bergamot, sandalwood, patchouli and vanilla take the place of images.
Coherence as a form of luxury
In high-end artistic perfumery, the quality of the composition is the point from which everything begins. Its presence, however, is consolidated only through the universe of meanings the brand manages to build around the fragrance.
When working on a launch of this kind, listing the olfactory notes is useful, but it is not enough to convey what the public should feel. Those who encountered Auriga discovered bergamot, sandalwood, patchouli and vanilla. The real challenge was to let the public experience the sensations those materials evoke. To make them feel the sun itself. The ripe field, the wind, the earth in their hands and a sky crossed by Phaethon’s chariot.
In luxury, consistency makes the imaginary credible. It allows a product to surprise without losing its bond with the maison that created it, and translates strategic direction into a tangible experience. The value of the launch thus continues beyond the campaign, shaping the way the fragrance is discovered, experienced and remembered.
The launch of Auriga, curated by Bliss
Auriga was born within the Executive Advisory programme that Bliss has been pursuing for years alongside Profumum Roma. An ongoing relationship that spans brand direction, positioning, the construction of its imagery, creative production, advertising and digital presence. Each new project thus becomes part of a broader vision, one able to safeguard the identity the maison has built over thirty years of history while guiding it towards cutting-edge forms, languages and experiences.
For Auriga, this meant starting long before the images, the materials and the event. The work began with the search for a story that genuinely belonged to the boys of Sant’Elena, and that could serve as the foundation for every subsequent choice.
From that direction came the memory of the harvest, the myth of Phaethon, the campaign in acts, the Notti and the Scrigno di Auriga. Different elements, governed by the same idea. And therefore recognisable as parts of the same universe.
The myth gave depth to the memory. The harvest brought the sun down to earth. The narrative structure guided the public all the way to the bottle. And so Auriga found its place in the universe of Profumum Roma: rooted in the earth, crossed by the sun, always turned towards the stars.
New connections (FAQ)
What was Bliss’s role in the launch of Auriga?
Bliss led the strategic and creative direction of the launch, building the narrative that linked the olfactory composition to the harvest, the sun and the myth of Phaethon. The concept was then translated into the campaign, the Scrigno di Auriga, the narrative materials and the event Le Notti di Auriga, keeping a coherent direction across every touchpoint.
Why was the launch of Auriga built as a tragedy in several acts?
The division into Prologue, Parodos, Episode and Exodos made it possible to lead the audience gradually towards the revelation of the fragrance. The product initially remained off-screen, leaving the landscape, the myth and the anticipation to build its identity. The bottle appeared only once its narrative world had already become recognisable.
How do you turn a fragrance into a brand experience?
The process starts from the meaning the fragrance must hold within the maison’s universe. That meaning is then translated into words, images, materials, packaging, content and events. When every element follows the same direction, the public encounters the fragrance through a coherent experience that begins before the first contact with the scent and lives on in memory.