Gai Mattiolo
Roman fashion house whose 1990s glamour translated into accessible scent.
Gai Mattiolo is a Roman fashion house founded in 1987 by Gaetano Mattiolo, known during the 1990s for bold, embellished evening wear that dressed Italian celebrities and attracted a loyal Mediterranean clientele. The fragrance line followed the fashion brand's trajectory, producing accessible designer-level scents in collaboration with notable perfumers including Alberto Morillas, Bernard Ellena, and Jean Claude Deville — a roster that speaks to serious fragrance ambition despite the brand's accessible positioning. The house became particularly associated with floral orientals and sensual feminines that reflected the era's Italian glamour aesthetic. As the couture business contracted in the 2000s and 2010s, the fragrance line carried much of the brand's remaining commercial presence. Gai Mattiolo fragrances are now collected partly as objects of 1990s Italian fashion nostalgia and partly for their own merits as well-made accessible-prestige compositions. Distribution shifted toward discount channels as the brand's fashion profile diminished, though the existing back catalogue retains interest among fragrance enthusiasts who discovered the house through its peak-era releases.
DNA over time
Each column is an era. Each colored band shows that family’s share of accord weight across every perfume the house released in that window. Bigger band = the house leaned harder on that family.
