How did it all start?
Ale, our founder and ‘nose’, spent his whole career working for big cosmetic brands. He didn’t come from a prestigious perfumery school — in fact, he stumbled into the industry almost by accident. In his R&D role in the UK, he was in charge of developing flavours for lipsticks, lip balms, and even toothpaste. It's a different craft compared to traditional perfumery, with its own rules and technical challenges.
During lockdown, when he often found himself alone in the R&D lab, he finally had the time and headspace to experiment. He started playing around with the raw materials
from the perfumer’s organ, sneaking some of his creations into cosmetic formulas like soaps and creams.
Then came a call from Italy: he was moving back to the motherland. He accepted a new R&D job, but this time it didn’t include perfumes or flavour development — but the
universe clearly had other plans. In his very last week in London, a luscious shower gel, scented with one of his formulas, went viral on TikTok. Everyone was obsessed with its rich, gourmand scent. It went viral again and again, riding the post-Covid craving for foody fragrances. That’s when Ale knew: he had to keep practicing his perfumery skills.
Keeping your nose trained is just like going to the gym — if you don't stay consistent, you lose your edge. To do that, you need an 'organ' stocked with hundreds of raw materials. As luck would have it, when Ale flew to Milan to house-hunt, he found a flat with a spare room in the attic — which quickly became the very first Narici lab. He ordered all the essentials: raw materials, pipettes, a precision scale, a few bottles — and started mixing, no brief, no deadlines, just pure experimentation. Before he knew it, he had a notebook full of formulas.
The first real challenge?
Ale wanted to use sesame absolute — one of his favourite materials. Indie perfumers can’t buy it; it’s reserved for the big brands. So he found a partner who could do small-scale extractions and commissioned a bespoke absolute made from the seeds of a Sicilian sesame, a rare variety protected as a Slow Food presidium. The resulting absolute had such a distinctive organoleptic profile that it became the core of Narici N°1 — the brand’s signature fragrance and its first single-origin creation.
Over the next three years, Ale and his boyfriend Wouter explored more of Italy’s sunniest corners on their holidays. In those places, you’ll find citrus orchards, flower fields, and other local treasures — the same ingredients Italians have used in perfumery since the Renaissance. Visit the Bergamot Museum in Reggio Calabria or the lavender fields of Chianti, and you can't help but be inspired. That’s why Narici is also a platform to celebrate Italian agricultural excellence and olfactory heritage.
Everything was falling into place, and there was no time to waste.
Narici officially launched online on 02.05.25 — on Ale’s 38th birthday.
But why Narici?
Narici sounds sleek and sophisticated in English — but in Italian, it simply means nostrils (which we find hilarious for a perfume brand). It also has a nice assonance with names like Gucci and Fiorucci… a promising omen for a startup. Nat, who worked on the art direction, designed our N — shaped like the nasal turbinates inside our noses — and chose a shade of blue inspired by the metallic barrels used to ship
essential oils around the world.
