Gelsomino a Freddo

Signatures of the Sun

Acqua di Parma launched Gelsomino a Freddo in 2025 in Signatures of the Sun, the collection that the house devotes to raw materials rather than themes. Each fragrance in it foregrounds an ingredient and the process used to obtain it.

The name states the method more than the subject. “A freddo” means cold: this is not a promise of freshness, but a mention of an extraction carried out without heat, which the house places at the center of its argument.

Cold enfleurage

Enfleurage consists of laying fresh flowers on a fatty substance that absorbs their scent. Here the medium is purified shea butter, and the jasmine flowers are placed on it by hand, without ever being heated.

The cycle repeats: spent flowers give way to fresh ones until the fat is saturated. F Luxury Magazine describes forty-eight-hour rests between two infusions. The industry abandoned this process in the twentieth century because it costs time.

Daphne Bugey

The formula is signed by Daphne Bugey. The house sums up its intention in one word, contrast: on one side a white jasmine held in the light, on the other smoky undertones of black tea and guaiac wood.

The wager is risky. The jasmine carries the whole statement, and nothing in the formula would come to the rescue of a disappointing flower. Making Scents Makes Sense sees in it less a concept than a setting made to showcase a beautiful raw material.

An eau de parfum, then an extrait

The eau de parfum is sold in 50, 100 and 180 ml, in the collection's transparent bottle with the redesigned label, delivered in the house's hatbox. At Sephora, two references coexist, at €225 and €320.

A few months later, the house followed up with Gelsomino a Freddo Ambrosia, dosed at 30% concentrate, where myrrh, olibanum and cardamom weigh down the structure. It is a different fragrance, not a reinforced version of the first.