Heritage
A house, in its own words
Água de Cabo Verde emerged in 2021 from a deeply personal place. Its founder, Maria Giovanna Mendes, was born in Italy to Cape Verdean parents and grew up navigating two worlds: the volcanic islands of her heritage and the refined craft traditions of her birthplace. That dual identity became the seed of the brand. Rather than choosing one lineage over the other, she set out to weave them together, building a perfume house that could carry Cape Verdean soul through Italian artisanal technique. The project took shape as a partnership between Maria and her husband, with the operational heart of the company anchored in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. From the beginning, the ambition was clear: create artistic fragrances that honor the landscapes, rituals, and biodiversity of the archipelago while meeting the rigorous standards of European niche perfumery. The young house moved quickly. By the early 2020s it had assembled a small but coherent collection, positioning itself as one of the first contemporary artistic perfumery ventures to emerge from the Cape Verdean islands. The brand's activity continued through at least 2023, during which it refined its voice and built a following drawn to its cultural specificity and warmth. Água de Cabo Verde operates on the conviction that scent is a vessel for memory and belonging. Each composition begins with an emotional or cultural reference, a place, a feeling, a story from the islands, and translates it into a wearable form. The brand does not treat Cape Verde as a decorative motif. Instead, it treats the archipelago's identity, its herbs, its sea breeze, its diaspora experience, as the true creative engine. What sets the house apart is this fusion of origins. Maria Giovanna's Italian upbringing brings fluency in the European niche tradition, while her Cape Verdean roots supply the raw material of inspiration. The result is perfumery that feels grounded in a specific geography yet speaks a universal language. The brand is also deeply personal. Água de Cabo Verde is, in many ways, a self-portrait, an offering from someone who has lived the meeting of two cultures and wanted to bottle that meeting. This sincerity gives the work its quiet intensity. It is artistic perfumery in the truest sense: each fragrance is a small, deliberate statement about who the wearer might be.