MILAN — Sofia Bertolli Balestra is adding another cornerstone to the Balestra brand — or a brick, as she pointed out showing the bottle of the first fragrance launched under her watch.
“We are building the new course step by step, brick by brick, laying the foundations for the future,” said Bertolli Balestra, granddaughter of the late couturier Renato Balestra. “As with any building, it takes time to build a story and we don’t want to rush into it. And I like the essential lines of the bottle and the cap.”
With a bottle piped in the signature blue identified with the brand for years, the fragrance is called Balestra1924, paying tribute to the centenary of her grandfather. “The date celebrates our history, our values and our past, but it’s also a bridge into the future,” she said.
The fragrance is licensed to Eurocosmesi, which also produces fragrances for Jennifer Lopez, for example, and was the licensee of the original perfumes launched by the founder in the early 1970s.
Bertolli Balestra opined that the scent “is projected into the future because it’s unisex, priced accessibly at 49.90 euros, so that a small part of Balestra can enter in anyone’s home, it can attract new customers across the board, also younger, and it’s versatile. It can be worn from morning to evening.”
The Balestra1924 eau de parfum.
The 90-ml. eau de parfum, which is launching online on the brand’s website, includes top notes of bergamot, thyme and grapefruit; heart of ginger, cinnamon, rose and leather, and a base of vanilla, amber, musk, elemi and wood. “I like the idea that it takes some time to discover and understand the notes, which are so different and contrasting,” she said.
Since 2022, Bertolli Balestra has been spearheading the brand’s development, building on its impressive archive, which includes more than 40,000 sketches and drawings, hundreds of gowns, videos and newspaper articles, and declared of historical interest by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities.
Renato Balestra was known for his couture gowns, signature painterly embroidery, blend of fabrics and transparencies, and even a distinctive color — Balestra blue.
Bertolli Balestra launched a first collection of women’s ready-to-wear in February 2022, and she said the brand has recently been catching the attention of musicians, such as Karol G and Laura Pausini. Jared Leto wore a sparkling sequined cape in Balestra blue during a concert in Jakarta with his group Thirty Seconds to Mars in 2023.
A sketch of the Balestra cape for Jared Leto.
For the first time, Balestra will be dressing a man, Italian rapper Willie Peyote, on the stage of the very popular Sanremo music festival kicking off on Tuesday. Peyote will wear custom-made Balestra, as will singer Serena Brancale.
The brand is privately owned by the family, the founder’s daughters Fabiana — Sofia’s mother — and Federica Balestra.
Renato Balestra, who died in November 2022, opened his first atelier in Rome in 1959, where the company is still based, after an apprenticeship with Jole Veneziani and working for the likes of Emilio Schubert, Maria Antonelli and Sorelle Fontana. His passion for cinema led him to design costumes for the likes of Ava Gardner in “The Barefoot Contessa” and “The Sun Also Rises;” Sophia Loren in “Lucky to Be a Woman,” and Candice Bergen in “The Adventurers,” among others, becoming a favorite of movie stars who also included Elizabeth Taylor, Claudia Cardinale and Carroll Baker, to name a few.
