Helan
Italian botanical perfumery from Genoa, since 1976.
Helan is a Genoese cosmetics and perfumery house built around botanical research. Founded in 1976 by a young university researcher, it has spent nearly five decades formulating skincare and fragrance from plant extracts, cold-pressed oils, and essential oils sourced through fair-trade and certified organic channels. The laboratory sits outside Genoa, and the operation remains family-scaled rather than industrial. The perfume line — sold under the umbrella I Profumi di Helan — leans Mediterranean rather than gourmand: vetiver, citrus, white amber, herbal aromatics. Compositions are unfussy and ingredient-led, the kind a soft chemist might wear, with bottles that read more apothecary than couture. Helan suits readers who like Italian niche but find the hyper-stylised end of the category exhausting. Distribution stays largely European, with a small US footprint through natural-beauty retailers.
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.
