Mandarina Duck

Mandarina Duck is an Italian fashion house founded in Bologna in 1977 by Paolo Trento and Pietro Mannato [6]. It built its name on leather goods and travel articles, and its perfume line — the focus of this entry — is produced under license by AB Parfums S.p.A. The fragrance business remains active: a current website carries a new "Life is a Journey" collection, and a 2025 licensing transaction folded the perfume rights into the Give Back Beauty group [7].

The house takes its name and identity from the mandarin duck, which it casts as a colourful, tireless traveller and lifelong companion. That image of movement and discovery runs through both the original luggage business and the scents that now carry the brand.

The company began in 1977 in Bologna as an Italian fashion firm specialising in leather goods and travel articles [6]. Its first collection was named Utility. From the start, Mandarina Duck positioned itself around functional design and bright colour; the company describes innovative fabrics, design, functionality and bold colours as its early "key success factors," and frames its work as continual experimentation with new materials to meet changing lifestyles.

Through the 1980s and 1990s the brand expanded internationally, reaching 68 shops worldwide by 1996 and opening branches in cities including Paris, Barcelona, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Vienna and London [6]. It also moved beyond luggage into a wider set of products, among them sunglasses, watches and fragrances.

A recurring thread is collaboration outside fashion. Mandarina Duck launched the Mini Hatch luggage collection in 2004, designed a limited-edition Nissan Micra in 2007, and released its first mobile phone, the Moon, through Alcatel in 2009 [6]. The brand was later chosen to supply airline amenity kits, by Virgin Australia for business class in 2014 and by Turkish Airlines for economy class in 2019. In 2017 it introduced a handbag made from recycled plastic bottles, an early signal of the environmental positioning the fragrance line would also adopt [6].

Mandarina Duck has changed hands several times. In 2008 the Italian leather-goods retailer Antichi Pelletieri bought the brand's parent company, Finduck Group, for £29.2 million [6]. In July 2011 the Korean retailer E-Land acquired the then debt-ridden Mandarina Duck, and the fashion house has remained under E-Land ownership [6]. Giovanni Bonatti became chief executive in December 2015.

The perfumes follow a separate corporate path. The fragrance line is made and distributed under license by AB Parfums S.p.A., a company founded in 2013 as Angelini Beauty that specialises in creating and globally distributing fragrances for fashion brands [8]. On 31 January 2025, Give Back Beauty signed an agreement with Angelini Industries to acquire AB Parfums; trade coverage of the deal listed the Mandarina Duck license among the portfolio transferred, alongside names such as Trussardi and Laura Biagiotti [7]. AB Parfums operates within the Give Back Beauty group across markets including Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Benelux countries, Spain and Portugal [8].

The brand frames itself around travel, discovery and constant experimentation, distinguished by what it calls innovative materials, functional design and bold colours that respond to evolving lifestyles. The mandarin-duck symbol carries this idea, which the company sums up as "enthusiasm for discovery and experimentation, passion for innovation and creativity" [2]. In the fragrance line this becomes an explicit theme: the perfumes are presented as a journey of the mind and heart as much as a physical one, under the tagline "Life is a Journey."

The current fragrance range is split into For Her and For Him lines and centred on the "Life is a Journey" collection. Other scents include Mandarina Duck Black, Mandarina Duck Woman and Vida Loca. The line also extends to genderless fragrance with The Duckers Freedomland, described by the company as a "genderless" scent in a bottle designed to be sprayed held either horizontally or vertically, aimed at travellers who do not see themselves in conventional categories.

Compositions lean on bright, citrus-forward and woody materials. The For Her side of "Life is a Journey" draws on Italian mandarin, Brazilian pink pepper, cherry blossom, orange blossom, sandalwood, Madagascar vanilla and cedarwood, while the For Him version uses Chinese mandarin, cardamom, cinnamon, rose accord, Texas cedarwood and patchouli.

Environmental messaging is a stated part of the fragrance business, organised around three principles: ecological planning to reduce shipping journeys and CO2 emissions, recycling of materials such as paper, cardboard and glass, and the use of new ecological materials to lower resource use. On packaging, the company says the glass in its bottles is repeatedly recyclable, that it avoids chemical solvents by using water-based colours, and that the cartons use paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) [3]. The brand site links to Give Back Beauty for recycling instructions.

The fragrance line is active. Its website was current as of 2026 and carried a newly launched "Life is a Journey" collection, and the perfume license was part of the January 2025 Give Back Beauty acquisition of AB Parfums [7]. The parent fashion house, founded in 1977, remains owned by E-Land, while the scents are produced under license by AB Parfums within the Give Back Beauty group.