History
It was founded in 1916 and began in the city of Parma in a small perfume factory and was in manufacture until the 1940s in Europe. The brand's sales fell in the decades following World War II, but it was revived in 1993 following a management buy-out financed by Tod's owner Diego Della Valle, Luca di Montezemolo of Ferrari, and Paolo Borgomanero, a major shareholder of lingerie retailer La Perla.
The company was eventually acquired by LVMH in 2001 and it now has its headquarters in Milan.
The company's original scent, Colonia, was created in 1916 in a small perfume factory in the centre of Parma's historic old town and was intended to perfume the handkerchiefs of Italian men. Today Colonia is used widely by both men and women as a personal scent. At the time of the company's birth, the majority of commercial perfumes were much stronger and heavier in composition; the unusually light and fresh fragrance from Parma found wide success in Europe. It later became popular in the USA, where Hollywood stars, particularly those of English heritage such as Audrey Hepburn, David Niven and Cary Grant, wore Acqua di Parma's sophisticated scent.
Read more about this topic: Acqua Di Parma
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)