Beauty’s best innovations don’t always chase the next big thing. This issue celebrates enduring icons, thoughtful craftsmanship, and modern classics – from a fragrance created for a queen nearly five centuries ago to design-forward home scents, rose-powered skincare, and even a dog shampoo worthy of your vanity.
How famed Italian pharmacy Santa Maria Novella is still looking ageless at 800 years old.
The year: 1221. The place: Florence, Italy. Dominican friars plant a garden of medicinal plants on a site known as Santa Maria Inter Vineas (Holy Mary Among the Vines). These herbs and flowers are used to concoct botanical elixirs for nobility, laying the groundwork, literally and figuratively, for what would become Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella – now considered the world’s oldest active pharmacy.
To visit Via della Scala 16, the building that has served as Santa Maria Novella’s Florentine headquarters since the early 17th century, is to pass through a portal into another time. Gleaming tiled floors reflect the baroque frescoes that adorn the barrel-vaulted ceilings overhead, while ornate woodwork cases display potions, powders, potpourri, delicate glass decanters, and handwritten recipes dating back centuries. There are aromatic vinegars that medieval doctors believed could ward off plague, tonics to encourage digestion made from pulverized roots and bark, and a famous garnet-red liqueur called Alchermes, spiced with cinnamon and cloves, known as the elixir of life at the Medici court during the Renaissance.
This is a hallowed, fascinating historical treasure trove, yet it doesn’t feel as though you are browsing in a museum. Call it monk magic, but Santa Maria Novella has tapped into the very essence of timelessness.
When, for example, you spritz the gorgeously refreshing, calming Acqua di Rose onto your skin, you are experiencing Santa Maria Novella’s oldest documented preparation: a water fragrant with damask rose, still produced using the formula recorded in 1381. (It is now also available in a full skincare line, as well as a pet deodorant.) Acqua della Regina, or the Queen’s Water, was the pharmacy’s first perfume, commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici for her wedding to the future King of France, Henry II, in 1533, and its blend of Italian citrus, petitgrain, rosemary, cloves, lavender, and musk still smells fresh and modern. And who wouldn’t want a hand-crafted terracotta pomegranate resembling an archaeological artifact that also emanates the room-filling aroma of Santa Maria Novella’s musky Melograno scent?
The inherent romance and beautiful presentation of everything produced by Santa Maria Novella may be key to its allure (nothing can elevate a sink-side tableau more than a Dentifricio Fior d’Iris toothpaste or a bottle of Rosa Gardenia hand soap), but the brand – especially since its 2021 acquisition by Italmobiliare, a major investment holding company – has also maneuvered masterfully to stay current.
The Giardini Medicei perfume collection, for instance, which launched in 2022 with a range of scents exploring the rare botanicals once found in the Medici gardens, has proven to be catnip for fragrance lovers. Standouts include Bizzarria, which pays olfactive homage to a unique citrus fruit discovered in 1644; Quercia, a deeply woody scent inspired by a 500-year-old oak tree that grows in the Medici’s Villa di Castello; and L’Iris, a haunting, powdery, earthy floral that conjures the essence of the iris, which has been Florence’s symbol since 1266.
In October, Santa Maria Novella will introduce a new eau de parfum of Angeli di Firenze, a scent that was created in 2006 as a tribute to the Angeli del Fango, or Angels of the Mud – a group of young volunteers who rescued invaluable artworks from the wreckage of a devastating flood that struck Florence in 1966. The original eau de cologne, a bright burst of peach and salty air, drew upon the Santa Maria Novella archives for every element of its presentation, from the 18th-century illustration on its label to the stylized text sourced from Bouquet di Firenze, an ancient fragrance blend documented in the Officina’s records. The scent has been such a hit that it now headlines a full bath-and-body collection, which is another point on the continuum linking the brand’s storied past to its present-day pleasures.
In the end, this may be the secret to Santa Maria Novella’s enduring success. It offers a glimpse into a rarefied and revered past, when everything was made slowly and with great care, and even as it has expanded into boutiques all over the world, it has kept the hallmarks of its unique heritage intact. In a time so rife with marketing spin and fabricated brand backstories, Santa Maria Novella is the real deal: an 800-year-old institution creating beautifully presented, time- tested products that are as much a joy to look at as they are to use. Everyone’s talking about longevity these days – but how often do we really see it?
Taken from 10 Magazine USA Issue 7 – HERITAGE, LEGACY, FUTURE – out September 18! Order your copy here.
Photography courtesy of Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella
Instagram: @santamarianovella1221
