Teaming Up with Roberto Ugolini Fragrances & The Nose Behind

We’re really excited to introduce you to Roberto Ugolini fragrances which we will be exclusively distributing in the United States. And we’ll share why we think this brand is such a great addition to a gentleman’s wardrobe.

Honestly, you only ever have one chance to make a first impression. As you probably already know, putting your best foot forward with a stylishly well-put-together outfit and footwear is the way to go. However, as we all realized through COVID times, humans have five senses and one of them is the sense of smell and it’s a very powerful one. No matter how good you look, if you smell bad, people will walk away from you when they meet you for the first time and say, “Oh, it’s that smelly guy.” So today, we’re pumped to introduce you to Roberto Ugolini fragrances.

Roberto Ugolini History

Some of you may say Roberto Ugolini is a bespoke shoemaker from Florence, Italy. What does he have to do with fragrances? Let us back up a little back in 2005. Raphael was still enthusiastically participating in menswear online. And that’s where he met the character of Grimo De La Reniere, who was, of course, an alter ego, but the man behind that was Herbert Stricker, a fellow German. He was a distributor of high-end colognes and perfumes. And so they would travel to different cities in Germany, and he would regularly stop by Hamburg, the city where Raphael went to law school at.

When he was in town, they’d meet up for dinner, discuss clothing and have fun together. Herbert became a great friend, and through him, Raphael was introduced to the world of high-end fragrances, which he’s an absolute expert in.

Over the years, he evolved from being just a distributor to being the producer or ‘the nose behind’ the scent. Often, he would get an idea for a fragrance when he was traveling or when he was seeing something. But then he would maybe sleep on it, think about it for a year or two, and eventually, this idea developed that he wanted to launch his own fragrances that were different from the things that were in the market already. At first, Herbert wasn’t sure about how to name the fragrances. He taught with the idea of naming it after himself or coming up with a fantasy name or using the name of another person. Not someone that was famous in the fragrance world but someone that was somewhat adjacent to it.

Standing close is seven feet tall, Herbert Stricker has the most extensive bespoke experience of anyone we know. After trying many different bespoke shoemakers, he has been making his shoes at Roberto Ugolini in Florence. And as it so happens, Mr. Ugolini is also a fragrance lover. The two talked and decided that Herbert would launch the Roberto Ugolini fragrance line. As you can see, the logo on the Roberto Ugolini bespoke shoes is the same as on the fragrance bottles.

You may say, “Wait a second, the brand Roberto Ugolini with the Italian Dolce Vita Flair is actually run by a stodgy German? Not quite.”

Herbert grew up in Northern Italy, where he speak German and Italian. So, leveraging his vast network with his experiences and his expertise, he created scents that weren’t copycats of other popular scents but true unique fragrances designed for people who appreciate quality clothing and quality everything. So what does that mean? Actually, the cost of the ingredients in Roberto Ugolini fragrance is a lot higher than what you see in regular mainstream colognes. But it’s not just the quality of any ingredients but it’s also the concentration.

Many colognes are in a range of 5 to 10, or maybe 15 percent of oil or fragrance concentration and Roberto Ugolini fragrances start at 20 percent which makes them eau de parfum which is a very strong scent. And they go all the way up to 30 percent, which you could characterize as an extrait de parfum or an extract. There are a lot stronger, meaning you get that strength that lasts all day, and you get a lot more for your money. It also means they don’t use any artificial stabilizers often found in mainstream colognes. Yes, you’ll get the true essence here, just blend it with alcohol. With such a high concentration of oils, you need special hard work, but we’ll discuss more about that later.

Teaming Up with Roberto Ugolini Fragrance

In the past, the only products sold in our Gentleman’s Gazette shop are those of Fort Belvedere, which we have designed and created to our specific high-quality standards. Of course, knowing Herbert, we’ve taught with the idea of creating our own Fort Belvedere fragrances. However, developing a fragrance from start to finish is not only a costly endeavor, but you also may end up with something that you don’t actually like.

Herbert’s company sells a plethora of high-end fragrances, but when Raphael smelled Roberto Ugolini fragrances for the first time, he could see himself wearing all of them, which was not an experience he previously had with cologne. So rather than starting our own line where we didn’t quite know what to get, we decided to actually incorporate a high-quality fragrance range that we truly liked and believed in. It was also a very good core value fit because, just like Gentleman’s Gazette, they focus on top-notch quality products.

As the exclusive U.S. distributor, we will not just sell those fragrances on Gentleman’s Gazette but we’ll also plan to roll those out to exclusive high-end vendors of fragrances and maybe other stores in the coming year. Honestly, we never associate the Gentleman’s Gazette brand name with another brand that we didn’t 100 percent believe in. We liked that it was a complete collection of fragrances because different people like different things. And the same cologne may smell somewhat different on different skins and people. We didn’t want a one-size-fits-all solution but something that people could truly identify with after they smelled it.

When you make fragrances, you start with essences, and one of the things Herbert Stricker always does is, he has a vision for a scent, and he shares that with a — who is the one who puts together the composition. And many brands start out by saying “Hey, our gold price per one kilogram of this essence is this.” And with that in mind, they then design and produce a fragrance. Herbert Stricker goes about it in a different way.

He doesn’t set pricing but lets the perfumer decide and create something they truly want. And once they’re done, and they say this is it, then they look at the price. The key is pairing these different essences to create a multi-layered olfactory experience. With a concentration of 20 to 30 percent, which is a buff industry standard, you get two benefits.

Improved Longevity

Stimulating Sillage

The second thing you get with the higher concentration is called Sillage, which means how present the smell is when let’s say, you enter a room. Of course, there’s also a great level of consistency with scent, so one bottle of Roberto Ugolini Oxford smells like the other Roberto Ugolini Oxford. It also has an impact on the value proposition. If you need three or four sprays from a lesser cologne, maybe even five or six, you’ll be fine with just one, at the most, two sprays from Roberto Ugolini fragrance.

The attention to detail doesn’t stop with the essences, but you’ll also get nice packaging and a beautiful bottle inspired by the shoemaking trade. The cap, for example, is a genuine horn cap. And if you take a closer to the label, it’s actually made of genuine leather.

Roberto Ugolini Fragrances

The bottles come in a beautiful range of colors that at first may seem random, but it’s all inspired by colors prevalent in the City of Florence, Italy, or Firenze, as the Italian said.

Red

The red bottles are inspired by the city’s coat of arms. Red and blue are also colors found in the crest of the Medici family, which is very famously associated with the City of Florence.

Brown

The brown on the Oxford bottle was inspired by the color of the roofs of the city.

Green

The green came from the Lush Hills in Tuscany.

Viola or Violet

The viola, or violet, is the official color of Florence.

All these distinctive colors don’t just make it easy to find the right fragrance if you have multiple of them, but they also look very nice on your dresser or your shelf. The names of the fragrance in the line reflect the connection to shoemaking in the City of Florence. There’s also a range of not-so-obvious under-the-hood details. For example, the vaporizer is specially designed for these high concentrations of fragrances, which are unusual. A regular vaporizer may get clogged, and there are even different qualities in vaporizers to get exactly the right mist. So, you can have a smaller or larger dosage, but you also get the right amount of spray.