Bottega Veneta is extending its fragrance universe with Alta, a new collection of ten Eaux de Parfum that moves through Italy by way of memory, landscape, texture and time.
If the house’s inaugural fragrance collection looked closely at Venice and its particular meeting of cultures, Alta widens the lens. Italy becomes less a fixed geographical reference and more a starting point for exchange, with each scent bringing an Italian ingredient or accord into conversation with another sourced from elsewhere in the world.
At the heart of the collection is what Bottega Veneta calls the “Intrecciato duo”, a fragrance interpretation of the house’s signature woven leather technique. Instead of interlacing strips of leather, Alta pairs ingredients, cultures and sensations. Italian basil meets vetiver from Madagascar. White fig is combined with American cedarwood. Saffron is deepened by Vietnamese benzoin. Fior di Sale meets South Asian oud.
The result is a collection that treats Italian identity as something open, layered and constantly in dialogue with the world.
That approach also gives Alta an unusually broad olfactory range. The ten scents shift between citrus, aromatic freshness, soft florals, warm woods, leather, resins and gourmand notes, loosely tracing the changing atmosphere of a day from morning brightness to the intimacy of night.
Always Now opens with the vivid freshness of an Italian basil accord, grounded by the refined intensity of vetiver Bourbon essence from Madagascar. Montebello, meanwhile, takes inspiration from the gardens surrounding the house’s atelier in Veneto, combining blood orange with North African neroli for something luminous yet quietly layered.
There is a warmer, more relaxed quality to Balliamo, which imagines a summer evening through lush Italian white fig and American cedarwood. Its name, meaning “let’s dance”, hints at the sense of movement that runs throughout Alta. These fragrances are conceived less as static compositions than as moments that gradually change on the skin.
With Bare Morning, the atmosphere turns intimate. Powdery Italian talco accord is woven with Oceania sandalwood, creating a soft, skin-like scent. Slow Rise moves toward late summer, combining roses with French clary sage.
Ricordami draws on childhood nostalgia with perhaps the collection’s most unexpected accord: stracciatella ice cream. Its milky vanilla and chocolate notes are grounded by oakwood, taking one of Italy’s most familiar flavours and turning it into something textural, sophisticated and slightly strange. It is also a reminder of how far Alta is willing to push traditional interpretations of Italian perfumery.
As the imagined day darkens, so does the collection.
Moment After brings together Italian leather accords and smooth vanilla, creating a subtler interpretation of sensuality. Night Sounds combines Italian saffron with Vietnamese benzoin, producing a resinous warmth intended to evoke the atmosphere of the night.
Velvet Steps pairs syrupy Italian plum with Spanish labdanum for something enveloping and almost tactile, while Crepuscolo, named after the Italian word for twilight, captures the transition into darkness through contrasting notes of salty Fior di Sale and South Asian oud.
Across the ten fragrances, Alta continuously plays with opposites: brightness and depth, freshness and warmth, familiarity and surprise. It is this tension that connects fragrance back to Bottega Veneta’s wider design language, where material, construction and tactility often carry as much meaning as ornament.
The bottle itself makes that connection explicit.
Bottega Veneta’s signature Intrecciato weave is translated into sculptural glass, its diagonal pattern wrapped around the bottle as a subtle architectural texture. A wooden cap and gold-finished ring reference both Venetian architecture and jewellery craftsmanship, continuing the visual language established by the house’s earlier fragrance releases.
Each bottle is made using recycled glass and is refillable, available in both 50ml and 100ml formats.
The collection will also be accompanied by bespoke woven leather accessories, bringing the relationship between fragrance and the house’s leather craftsmanship even closer.
With Alta, Bottega Veneta is not simply adding ten perfumes to its beauty offering. It is building an olfactory vocabulary around the same ideas that have long shaped the house itself: craft, material, cultural exchange and the beauty created when seemingly different elements are woven together.
And while the collection may begin in Italy, its real subject is what happens when Italy looks outward.
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