Gucci

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History of the house

The Gucci house was founded in Florence in 1921 by Guccio Gucci, born in 1881 and who died in 1953. Marked by his time as a porter at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he observed the tastes of a wealthy clientele, Guccio Gucci opened a house of luxury leather goods and travel articles in Florence. Florentine leather craft and a repertoire of iconic motifs made Gucci, over the twentieth century, one of the great Italian houses of fashion and luxury.

At the turn of the 1990s and 2000s, the house went through a spectacular revival under the creative direction of Tom Ford, who put Gucci back at the center of international fashion. In 1999, the French group PPR, now Kering, took a stake in Gucci, and held almost all of its shares by 2004. The house then went through several notable creative directorships, including that of Frida Giannini. This fashion history matters for understanding the house’s niche perfumery: Gucci approached high perfumery in the wake of a strong artistic direction rather than through a purely cosmetic logic.

In 2015, Alessandro Michele took over creative direction. He imposed a romantic, maximalist and eclectic aesthetic. Michele left the house in late 2022, and Sabato De Sarno succeeded him as creative director from January 2023. He left in February 2025, and Demna, appointed in March 2025, took over as artistic director from July 2025.

Gucci’s perfumery is operated under license by Coty, under the name Gucci Beauty. It has produced several mainstream pillars, such as Gucci Bloom and Gucci Guilty. In October 2025, Kering and L’Oréal formed a beauty alliance. In July 2026, Kering announced the early termination of the Coty license, and Gucci perfumes will move to a fifty-year L’Oréal license from July 1, 2027.

It was within Alessandro Michele’s world that the haute parfumerie collection The Alchemist’s Garden was born in 2019, and it is the house’s anchor in niche perfumery.

Gucci perfumes, a history of licenses

Like most fashion houses, Gucci entrusts its perfumes to a beauty manufacturer, which develops, makes and distributes them under its name. The first known agreement tied Gucci to Germany’s Wella and its subsidiary Cosmopolitan Cosmetics for about twenty-five years. It expired in 2003, the year Procter & Gamble acquired Wella.

After a legal dispute, Gucci and P&G Beauty announced a new license in June 2006 to produce, sell and distribute Gucci fragrances. The former agreement with Wella and Cosmopolitan Cosmetics was then considered expired. Coty acquired the Gucci Beauty license in 2016.

In July 2026, Kering, L’Oréal and Coty brought forward by one year the end of the Coty license, due on 30 June 2028. Coty receives about 400 million dollars for the early exit. Subject to regulatory approvals, L’Oréal takes charge of Gucci Beauty worldwide from 1 July 2027, for fifty years.

The Parfumo database credits more than thirty perfumers on Gucci perfumes, among them Alberto Morillas, Daniela Andrier, Dominique Ropion, Maurice Roucel, Aurélien Guichard, Daphné Bugey, Antoine Maisondieu, Honorine Blanc and Nathalie Lorson.

The Alchemist’s Garden, the niche collection of Gucci

Launched in January 2019, The Alchemist’s Garden is Gucci’s haute parfumerie collection and its anchor in niche perfumery. It is composed by perfumer Alberto Morillas, of the house Firmenich, under the artistic direction of Alessandro Michele. The collection takes its name from the house’s autumn 2017 runway show and extends its imagination into fragrance.

The concept draws on alchemy and the transformation of lead into gold. The collection is designed for layering: alongside the eaux de parfum, it offers perfumed oils and scented waters that the wearer freely combines to create a personal accord. Each perfume focuses on a single material or idea, from the oud of The Voice of the Snake to the iris of Tears of Iris and the amber of The Eyes of the Tiger.

The collection is unisex, distributed more confidentially than the mainstream pillars, in a selection of Gucci boutiques and chosen points of sale. The apothecary-style bottles are adorned with botanical and animal illustrations that extend Alessandro Michele’s erudite, romantic aesthetic. The collection grew after the launch, notably in 2020 with perfumes such as A Chant for the Nymph.

The Alchemist’s Garden is closely tied to the Michele era. Yet it has outlived him. In 2025, three eaux de parfum joined it: Vanilla Firenze by Véronique Nyberg, Fiori di Neroli by Mathieu Nardin and Julie Massé, and Osmanthus Nectar by Nathalie Lorson. Two more eaux de parfum joined in 2026, Ylang Ambrato, a floral amber, and Lignum Idealis, a spicy woody.

It is through this collection, rather than its mass-market perfumes, that Gucci held its place in niche perfumery: an author-led, erudite and narrative haute parfumerie, carried by the meeting of a creative director and a great perfumer.

Notable perfumes

This page is about Gucci as a whole house; the table below looks only at its niche line.

Here are seven eaux de parfum from The Alchemist’s Garden, all from the 2019 launch and all composed by Alberto Morillas.

Alberto Morillas’s perfumes for Gucci

Alberto Morillas signed the first two Gucci perfumes conceived under Alessandro Michele, Gucci Bloom and Guilty Absolute pour Homme, launched in 2017. He then composed the Bloom flankers, several Guilty scents, The Alchemist’s Garden and Mémoire d’une odeur, in 2019.

In these first two perfumes, he used a new material. Guilty Absolute pour Homme rests on a Nootka cypress extract. Gucci Bloom features Rangoon creeper, captured by headspace in India, with jasmine sambac, tuberose and orris.

The launch of The Alchemist’s Garden, in January 2019, brought together fifteen items: seven eaux de parfum, four perfumed oils, three scented waters and one candle. The oils are A Kiss from Violet, A Nocturnal Whisper, A Forgotten Rose and Ode on Melancholy. The scented waters are A Winter Melody, Moonlight Serenade and Fading Autumn.

All fifteen launch items are composed by Alberto Morillas. Mémoire d’une odeur, launched in August 2019, is a unisex perfume built around Roman chamomile, with Indian coral jasmine, musks, sandalwood and cedar.

The table lists his dated Gucci creations, with the source of each attribution.

Olfactory signature

Gucci’s perfumery reads on two registers. On one side, mainstream pillars with worldwide reach, from the floral of Gucci Bloom to the woody aromatic of Gucci Guilty. On the other, The Alchemist’s Garden, a haute parfumerie interlude in which the house first entrusted a single perfumer, Alberto Morillas, with translating Alessandro Michele’s world.

Within the niche collection, the writing takes a material or an image as its starting point, then stages it in a legible composition that is easy to layer. It moves through floral registers built on rose, iris and violet, woody accords around vetiver and oud, and vanilla amber blends. The layering principle, rare at this level of the market, is one of the collection’s singularities.

The olfactory direction of the launch was that of Alberto Morillas, a perfumer of the house Firmenich. On the map of olfactory schools, Gucci belongs to a contemporary luxury perfumery, at the crossroads of Italian imagination and international high perfumery.

The layering ritual deserves a special mention. By offering eaux de parfum, oils and scented waters side by side, the collection invites the wearer to compose a personal accord rather than choose a single perfume. This gesture, borrowed from niche perfumery and oriental layering, sets The Alchemist’s Garden apart from most fashion-house collections and makes it as much a collector’s object as a perfumery product.

Key characteristics

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