The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
That's Amore Kisses XXX arrived in 2002 as part of Gai Mattiolo's expanding That's Amore! line, the Italian house's playful celebration of romantic gesture and theatrical Italian style. The XXX signals the kiss repeated, exaggerated, performed, and the fragrance carries that sensibility into a warm, embracing men's composition. Gai Mattiolo's house built its identity on the intersection of fashion and scent, treating perfume as another vehicle for the romance the clothing already expressed. Kisses XXX translated that theatrical confidence into a masculine frame, layering amber, spice, and powder softened by violet. The violet note carries the line's signature powder hush, giving the opening a soft-focus quality unusual in the early 2000s men's market.
What makes Kisses XXX interesting is how quiet its materials behave on skin. Violet and nutmeg form the heart, an unusual pairing that gives the fragrance its distinctive softness in a market where masculine compositions often defaulted to sharper, more bracing florals. Violet adds a cool, powdery facet that feels almost cosmetic, dusting the composition with a soft-focus quality, while nutmeg gives a warm, almost edible spice that bridges the bright citrus top to the resinous base. The result is a composition that never raises its voice.
The evolution
The first 30 minutes are the brightest the fragrance gets. Bergamot and mandarin orange hit immediately, cool and slightly sweet, with a faint peppery flicker from coriander that keeps the citrus from feeling generic. The heart, which settles in around the 45-minute mark, pulls everything down a half-tone. Violet arrives with that distinctive cool-powder facet, almost cosmetic, while nutmeg warms the edges, giving the edge a soft, slightly spiced creaminess that smooths the transition from bright to fresh. The violet doesn't dominate so much as colour everything around it, turning the citrus warm. By the 2-hour mark the base has fully taken over: sandalwood and amber lay down a smooth, slightly sweet foundation, and benzoin adds a thin layer of resinous warmth. Vanilla softens the final 3-4 hours.
Cultural impact
That's Amore Kisses XXX arrived in 2002 as part of a cluster of releases from Gai Mattiolo's That's Amore! line, a series that explored variations on romantic, theatrical Italian style through fragrance. The composition itself reads as a violet-amber masculine softened by spice, a profile that feels distinctly of its early-2000s moment without being locked into place to it. The pairing of violet and nutmeg in the heart gives the fragrance a period-specific character, the kind of soft, powdery-spiced masculinity that defined certain Italian designer releases of the era. Its sibling That's Amore!
