Heritage
A house, in its own words
The story of La Collina Toscana begins in 1942 in Bibbiena, a medieval village nestled in the Casentino valley of Tuscany. Here, Silvia's grandparents opened a small perfumery shop that would become the foundation for a family legacy spanning multiple generations. The business remained a traditional Italian perfumery for decades, serving the local community with classic fragrances and toiletries crafted using regional ingredients and time-honored methods. The brand operated under the parent company Giardini di Toscana, which managed the family's fragrance business throughout its early history. In recent years, the house experienced a significant renewal when Silvia, the granddaughter of the original founders, took creative control. As both heir to the family tradition and trained perfumer, Silvia undertook a comprehensive reimagining of the brand, developing new fragrance collections that drew upon her heritage while embracing contemporary niche perfumery aesthetics. This transformation positioned La Collina Toscana within the artisan fragrance movement, expanding its reach beyond Italy while maintaining its distinctly Tuscan identity. The brand's history reflects a common pattern among Italian fragrance houses: a shift from regional pharmacy-perfumery origins to internationally recognized niche status, guided by family members who became professional perfumers. The 2008 and 2011 fragrance launches marked key moments in this evolution, introducing signature scents that established the house's olfactory identity. La Collina Toscana operates from a fundamental conviction that fragrance should function as a vehicle for memory and geographic experience. The house designs each perfume to transport wearers to specific Tuscan locations, transforming olfactory impressions into sensory maps of the countryside. This approach reflects a philosophy that perfume extends beyond mere pleasant scent into the realm of emotional and experiential connection. The brand emphasizes the use of ingredients native to the Tuscan region, considering local botanicals and traditional Italian aromatic materials as essential components of its creative vocabulary. Rather than pursuing international fragrance trends, La Collina Toscana looks inward toward its immediate environment for inspiration, finding in the Tuscan landscape a rich and inexhaustible source of olfactory material. The philosophy acknowledges the generational dimension of perfumery, treating the knowledge and traditions inherited from previous generations as valuable creative resources that inform contemporary work. Under Silvia's direction, the house balances respect for established methods with the creative freedom required for genuine artistic expression, understanding these not as opposing forces but as complementary aspects of a unified practice.