Eau d'Italie

Eau d'Italie is an Italian niche fragrance and body-care house founded in 2004 by Marina Sersale and Sebastián Alvarez Murena [1]. It began as the signature scent of Le Sirenuse, the Sersale family's hotel in Positano on the Amalfi Coast, and was created to mark the hotel's 50th anniversary [1]. The company, registered as EAU D'ITALIE s.r.l., is based in Rome and remains active, having released a new fragrance in 2024 for its 20th anniversary [4][6].

The house presents itself around a single idea, summarised in its tagline "The Essence of Italy," and has grown from one perfume into a small collection of fragrances alongside body lotions, liquid soaps and home scents.

Marina Sersale belongs to the family that owns Le Sirenuse, a hotel set in an 18th-century palazzo that the Sersale brothers opened in Positano after the Second World War. In 2004, to celebrate the hotel's 50th anniversary, Sersale and her partner Sebastián Alvarez Murena created Eau d'Italie as Le Sirenuse's signature fragrance [1]. According to third-party fragrance references, the perfume was developed with the perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour [5].

What started as a house scent for a single hotel became the foundation of an independent brand, named for the country it set out to evoke.

Eau d'Italie frames its work as an attempt to capture the feeling of Italy — and of Positano in particular — in scent. The founders described the goal as making "a fragrance that would represent Positano while being a contemporary classic Italian fragrance of the 21st Century," built around a mineral note evoking terracotta warmed by the sun [5]. The brand's references reach toward the light, gardens and Mediterranean landscape of the Amalfi Coast rather than toward a conventional perfume-house identity.

The company positions its products at the higher end of the market, and its fragrances are classified as niche [5].

The signature fragrance, also called Eau d'Italie, is built on top notes of incense, blackcurrant and bergamot, a heart of clay, magnolia and tuberose, and a base that includes musk, patchouli and amber [5]. Its olfactory family is described as citrus chypre.

Beyond the original scent, the collection has expanded to include fragrances such as Acqua di Positano, described by the company as a blend of salt grains and orange blossom absolute; Acqua Decima, evoking lemons and wild mint along Positano's Path of the Gods; Jardin du Poete, framed as a Sicilian citrus grove in summer; and Rosa Greta, set in a rose garden in Ravello. The house also produces hand and body lotions, liquid soaps, home fragrance and accessories.

The brand launched in 2004 alongside Le Sirenuse's 50th anniversary [1]. Two decades later, in 2024, Eau d'Italie marked its own 20th anniversary with a capsule collection and a new fragrance, Acqua di Positano, presented at Esxence 2024, the art-perfumery exhibition held in Milan [6].

Eau d'Italie operates as EAU D'ITALIE s.r.l., a limited company headquartered at Vicolo del Bottino 9 in Rome, with a boutique on Via della Penna in the same city [4]. The brand's pages name no parent or holding company, and identify a sister brand, Altaia, alongside the affiliated Le Sirenuse hotel.

The brand is active. It runs an e-commerce site and a Rome boutique, and its most recent publicly recorded activity is the 2024 launch of Acqua di Positano for its 20th anniversary, shown at Esxence 2024 [6]. Its products are distributed internationally through niche-fragrance retailers.