After learn­ing about my com­pany and my love of Italy, the next ques­tion is usu­ally — “Do you speak Ital­ian?” This ques­tion is posed with the hope­ful, dreamy expec­ta­tion that I will say “Yes, of course.” Alas, my sis­ter Divas, I do not speak Ital­ian. I know enough to be dangerous.

I can order food, find a restroom, argue with a taxi dri­ver and most impor­tantly, ask the price? Quanto Costa? I am often stopped on the street and asked direc­tions by locals and tourists. I can usu­ally give them accu­rately and in under­stand­able terms to each. I must look like a local or a fre­quent shop­per. It’s a gift, I con­fess, I usu­ally know where all the best shop­ping and clean restrooms are in most of Europe. The sec­ond item being one of the most use­ful tal­ents a girl can have.

One of my top goals in life is to learn Ital­ian. I have bought books, tapes and tried to take lessons — although I could never fin­ish a course because of busi­ness travel. I took 2 years of Latin in high school, stud­ied art his­tory, mythol­ogy and con­sume book after book about Italy’s cul­ture, food and his­tory. All these things have helped me feel very com­fort­able when trav­el­ing through­out Italy. Still, I am deter­mined to learn it.

As you read in the last post, Who is La Dolce Diva?, I started the com­pany to share Italy with the rest of the world. Or at least, my known world. In order to make it acces­si­ble, I mer­chan­dised the scents into 3 cat­e­gories: Bella Div­ina — Beau­ti­ful & Divine or Beau­ti­ful Diva, inspired by the gar­dens. Dolce Div­ina, Sweet & Divine or Sweet Diva inspired by the desserts.  Cucina Div­ina, Kitchen Diva, inspired by the aro­mas of Ital­ian cui­sine and botanicals.

The dessert inspired fra­grances and names came eas­ily, as you can imag­ine. The kitchen scents too. The gar­den scents were more dif­fi­cult. I wanted to be sure to rep­re­sent the essence of each city. Not a spe­cial con­coc­tion of an ethe­real aes­thetic, no,  an actual tan­gi­ble, tac­tile rela­tion­ship of the flo­ral scent to the city. I am a purist this way. It comes after years of research­ing designs and themes for apparel lines.

My next hur­dle was nam­ing the scents. Should they be the Eng­lish words? Ital­ian? A mix­ture? Since Amer­ica  has a long-standing love affair with Italy, we are famil­iar with many Ital­ian phrases, words and cities already. How­ever, I didn’t want to por­tray the com­pany as being “from” Italy. I didn’t want to be too inac­ces­si­ble and too for­eign sound­ing. I wanted to con­vey La Dolce Vita — The Sweet Life…even if you had never heard the phrase, the feel­ing and aspi­ra­tion are uni­ver­sal. I decided on a mix­ture of Ital­ian and Eng­lish. Still, I get ques­tions on how to pro­nounce some of the cities.

And so, in the com­ing posts,  I will write more about each scent and it’s ori­gins and pro­nun­ci­a­tion. I will try to con­vey all my enthu­si­asm and pas­sion for  each scent and Italy itself. If you met me in per­son you would know that I would be con­tin­u­ally using hand ges­tures to fur­ther artic­u­late and punc­tu­ate my points.  Maybe that means I have picked up some of the local flavor?

Stay tuned, it will be fascinating!