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A tale of research and enthusiasm for fragrances to savour
It all started at the beginning of the last century in Milan, when Giuseppe Casolari, grandfather of Calé's current president Silvio Levi, opened a ladies' hairdressing and beauty salon.
It was a few years later, around 1926, that the intuition came to open a prestigious shop in Florence, at that time an extremely lively, brilliant social and intellectual centre, to consolidate the brand's arts and reputation. The next decision came in 1930, after four years of experience serving the Florentine aristocracy and upper middle class: to go back to the capital of Lombardy, which was fast becoming the Kingdom's industrial and financial heart.
The salon re-opened in the city centre's via San Damiano and soon became so famous that the Queen of Italy would go nowhere else to have her hair done whenever she was visiting Milan.
The years went by, bringing us to 1938: the salon grew more and more successful as Giuseppe Casolari worked to refine his touch even more. The result was that he teamed up with his brothers to open the shop in via Montenapoleone that soon became Milan's most celebrated perfumery and beauty salon.
After the war and the bomb damage it caused came the move to Via Verri, where the perfumery made its mark for the range of rare perfumes it carried, coming from abroad and sought out with enthusiasm. They were absolutely new for Italy, which was dominated in the fifties by a small number of French brands, mostly related to the big names in haute couture. Only a few real connoisseurs knew about élite perfumery, based on unparalleled levels of quality, professionalism and tradition: a microcosm of English, French, German and American firms established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that often created exclusive, ingeniously innovative fragrances in the course of their pursuit of an absolutely prestigious tradition.
It was this rather special, refined sector that won so much importance in the shop in Via Verri that it laid the foundations for a separate new business, importing élite perfume products and distributing them in the Italian domestic market: established in 1955, that business was Calé.
Calé is now headquartered in the very heart of Milan, in the area of Corso Magenta where it is still possible to breathe the atmosphere of days gone by, very close to the beautiful eighteenth century palazzo in Via Santa Maria alla Porta that houses our luminous shop.
The eloquent name chosen by the company says it all about this salon of fragrances, this art gallery that displays the most creative and original expressions of the master perfumiers of past and present. That name is: Calé-Fragranze d'autore.
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Perfumes have always been considered to be a luxury item.
The almost exclusive preserve of the priestly or dominant classes, perfumes gradually became more accessible to a broader public, but without losing their lofty image, at least in the collective imagination, primarily because of how they are communicated in advertising. |
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| Today's excessively wide range makes it difficult to recognise the quality and verve underlying those unique creations that do not fit into the moulds of fashion and are destined to last. |
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