What Gorgeous Perfume

Miryana Babic fell in love in a tiny perfumery in Florence. She picked up a bottle of Caterina de Medici by i Profumi di Firenze, dabbed a drop of the fragrance on her wrist and was smitten. “The scent is like a living flower,” she says. “There is a sparkling quality that only nature can make because when you smell a flower, you’re smelling the totality--the root, the leaves.”

Babic couldn’t stop thinking about the perfume, so she set out to bring it home to Santa Monica. A few months later, the entrepreneur was importing the collection to boutiques such as Palmetto in L.A. and Planet Blue in Malibu. The line, based on recipes commissioned by Catherine de Medici, is crafted from the same ingredients used during the Renaissance: vanilla orchid from Madagascar, Damascus rose, Florentine purple iris. Perfume maker Giovanni di Massimo found the recipes in a 16th century Florentine manuscript that washed up in his shop basement after the flood of 1966.

I Profumi di Firenze is just one of the many niche lines taking off these days. Made in small batches, the artisanal blends feature fine ingredients such as amber from Nepal and myrrh from Ethiopia. In L.A., no one has been more influential in championing these distinctive scents than Ron Robinson, owner of Apothia at Fred Segal Melrose. We check in with him on the following pages, as he marks 25 years of bringing the best niche perfumes to fragrance-loving Angelenos.

--