As I have been blithely try­ing to pass on the secrets of La Dolce Vita in this blog, it occurred to me that I have never posted fully about the inspi­ra­tion for La Dolce Diva. Who is La Dolce Diva? What does it mean? How do you say it?

Let me answer those ques­tions first:

1. Who is La Dolce Diva? Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, I am not La Dolce Diva. Oh yes, I am the founder and Chief Exec­u­tive Diva, but A Sweet Diva…not all the time. La Dolce Diva is an aspi­ra­tion. Some­thing for all of us to strive for. Being a Diva is easy, being a Sweet Diva is not. A Sweet Diva still respects and stands  up for her­self and encour­ages and allows her sis­ter Divas to do the same. It is not about Women’s Rights…it is about respect and sup­port. With­out get­ting on a soap box, after many years in the cor­po­rate world, I real­ized that women can be our own worst ene­mies, fren­e­mies and obsta­cles. We try to teach our dar­ling
   Diva daugh­ters, nieces and young girls in gen­eral, about girl power. We encour­age, cod­dle, com­fort, and sup­port them into adulthood…but it seems a lot of that goes away when we are adult women out there in the cor­po­rate world or just every­day life. Some­times, we Sweet Divas need to remem­ber not to take every­thing per­son­ally. Take a moment to encour­age  a friend or a stranger. Take another moment to say what you are think­ing when some­one in line behind you looks espe­cially nice or com­pli­ment a sis­ter diva when it seems like she may need it the most. You know what I mean. These are the lit­tle things that get us through life. You may change some­ones day or out­look for the bet­ter. You may even change your own.
2. What does it mean? La Dolce Diva lit­er­ally means A Sweet Diva..if you haven’t fig­ured that out by now. It is meant to be a play  on the words La Dolce Vita, The Sweet Life. Also a play against the Diva stereo­type of a self– absorbed woman.
3. How do you say it? Dolce (dole-ché)- means ‘sweet’ in Ital­ian. The C is pro­nounced as a “ch”.  In case you are wondering…Dulce is Span­ish (dool-sé) — means ‘sweet’ in Span­ish and the C is pro­nounced as an “s” sound. So, La Dolce Diva means A Sweet Diva or just Sweet Diva. I am going to take the chance that you get the gist of what “Diva” means with­out translation.

Now for the rest of the story…

For the last twenty years my career as a designer in the fash­ion indus­try has taken me every­where from Los Ange­les to New York, Hong Kong to Lon­don, Paris to Berlin…but my heart stays in Italy.

Wan­der­ing the cob­ble­stone streets, palaz­zos, muse­ums and coun­try­side, enjoy­ing the delec­table gelatos, white truf­fle pasta and local Chi­anti, spend­ing end­less hours in tapes­try and pot­tery shops, soak­ing up the fla­vor of “La Dolce Vita”, my love and appre­ci­a­tion of Italy con­tin­ues to grow.

After sev­eral years of attend­ing wed­ding show­ers, birth­days, baby show­ers and numer­ous occa­sions of cel­e­bra­tion, I real­ized I was always search­ing for that per­fect gift ~ one that meant some­thing. Being a lotion & potion afi­cionada, I was usu­ally drawn to some sort of pam­per­ing beauty product.

A-ha! I would cre­ate a line of fab­u­lous bath and body prod­ucts that could be gifts for most any occa­sion ~ but not just ordi­nary gifts. My bath and body prod­ucts would be beau­ti­fully pack­aged, won­der­ful qual­ity and be inspired by Italy. I wrapped this all up into the iconic idea of the Ital­ian Diva…but a sweet diva, not a self-absorbed one!

La Dolce Diva was born.

The Dolce Div­ina, Bella Div­ina and Cucina Div­ina Col­lec­tions reflect my per­sonal love of Italy, They are meant to whisk you away to a charm­ing Roman café or a Flo­ren­tine gar­den ~ if only in your mind ~ while still remind­ing you that friend­ship is what truly defines the sweet life.