CORETERNO: The Scent of Seventies Rock and Roll Meets Classical Art

“We come from a lineage of alchemists, engravers, rebels, mystics, and poets. We guard centuries of secrets of immeasurable beauty. We have been trained to use the redemptive power of symbols and words wisely. Our story is one of true love and burning passion for ancient knowledge and unique handcraft. We want to breathe life into inanimate objects, so that people may discover mystery and the power to heal the soul within their messages.”

— From the Coreterno official website (Brand Manifesto)

Essential Information

Founded: 2015

Founders: Michelangelo Brancato and Francilla Ronchi

Official website: coreterno.com

The Founders and the Brand’s Origins

Rome as a Cradle

To understand Coreterno’s world, one must first understand the magnetic pull of Rome. Founder Michelangelo Brancato was born and raised there. His father, deeply passionate about art, took his young son to churches on Sundays and taught him how to see beauty before paintings and sculptures by Michelangelo, the great master, Caravaggio, and Bernini. That he and the artistic genius happen to share the name Michelangelo seems imbued with an inevitability beyond mere coincidence.

As he grew older, Michelangelo came to run a “visionary art gallery” in Rome. Within that space, he sought to bring classical beauty and rebellious energy together. He established a studio in an eighteenth-century castle among Rome’s historic backstreets, making it a base for their creations.

“Living in Rome constantly reminds us that we are the product of the dreams and work of the past. We want to bring a piece of that spirit to fierce, sometimes too-fast New York.”

— Francilla Ronchi & Michelangelo Brancato

Meeting Francilla

The brand’s other pillar, Francilla Ronchi, earned a master’s degree in cultural anthropology at Sapienza University of Rome before building a long career in Italian television. She worked as a programme writer, host, and presenter on at least 100 programmes for RAI, Italy’s public broadcaster, and Magnolia S.p.A. The couple met when she visited Michelangelo’s gallery for a television feature. After meeting several more times, they discovered that they shared values: a love of diversity, beautiful things, nonconformity, kindness of spirit, and loyalty to others. They married.

“Our bond is based on a love of diversity, beautiful things, nonconformity, kindness of spirit, and loyalty to others.”

— Michelangelo Brancato & Francilla Ronchi

A Revelation on the Streets of Manhattan, New York

The seed of Coreterno was planted one day as the two wandered the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “It was like a dream, like a premonition; now it has become reality,” they recall. Although the brand embodied the soul of Rome, they intuitively felt that it had to be born in New York.

The name CORETERNO is a coinage combining core, meaning “heart” or “core” in Roman dialect, and eterno, the Italian word for “eternal.” Its meaning is “eternal heart.” It pays tribute to the two founders’ Roman character.

In 2015, the pair began creating their first collection, Victorian Rocks, in a studio apartment. As they handmade every pillar candle and T-shirt, candles reportedly filled the apartment until there was not even room for a bed. This anecdote succinctly captures the brand’s nature: an obsession with handcraft, passionate immersion, and a creative impulse powerful enough to consume the space around it.

Artists & Fleas and a Baptism by the Media

A turning point came when they exhibited at Artists & Fleas, the creators’ market held every weekend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is an international place of discovery where buyers and trendspotters in fashion, vintage, art, and design gather. Coreterno’s candles and T-shirts quickly attracted attention and were featured in a half-page article in none other than the New York Post. Reportedly, the feature appeared between articles on President Obama and the New York Giants.

The subsequent T-shirt line, Dis.Order, became a favourite of VIPs in music and film and quickly turned into a social phenomenon. Italian rappers J-Ax and Fedez, singer Emma Marrone, and actor and film director Asia Argento became fans; Argento commissioned Coreterno to create an outfit for the Cannes Film Festival red carpet. Having tested the response in the American market, the two also exhibited at NYNOW at New York’s Javits Center, formally presenting their full healing-candle collection to the US market.

The Rebellious Spirit of the Seventies

Michelangelo cites a deep attachment to the 1970s as a spiritual pillar of the brand. That era overflowed with tremendous rebellious creative energy, sustained by ideals of freedom, sensuality, and transgression, or the breaking of conventions. The energy embodied by bands such as the Rolling Stones, Beastie Boys, Ramones, and Led Zeppelin lives within Coreterno. He also says that, if the brand had to choose a single concert, it would be the Clash’s 1979 show at the University of California, Berkeley theatre.

“Believe in your infinite potential.”

— Michelangelo Brancato (a favourite saying)

Michelangelo also has a strong commitment to philosophy and positive thinking. Supporting lesser-known artists and shining a light on undiscovered talent are likewise fundamental to the brand.

A Fragrance Debut at Pitti Fragranze in 2019

As the lifestyle brand gained fans around the world, the pair’s next step was into perfume. The brand had expanded first into T-shirts, then candles, with serious work on perfume coming at a later stage. In September 2019, it exhibited for the first time at Pitti Fragranze, the international perfume fair held at Florence’s Stazione Leopolda, making the world debut of four eaux de parfum. All four were composed by popular young Italian perfumer Luca Maffei, ambitious creations combining the world of seventies rock, pop, and underground culture with a passion for classical art.

What Defines the Brand

A Philosophy of Fragrance Creation

Coreterno’s fragrances are not merely “nice smells.” They are olfactory manifestos designed to “awaken the rock star within the wearer.” Under founder Michelangelo Brancato’s artistic direction, each creation offers a distinctive interpretation that blends the energy of seventies rock and roll, punk, and underground culture with the eternal appeal of classical art.

“I want people to feel like rock stars. It’s about energy, emotion, and transformation.”

— Michelangelo Brancato

Renowned noses, or perfumers, take on the work of composition. Chief among them is Luca Maffei of Atelier Fragranze in Milan, who has created many of Coreterno’s fragrances. Another important partner is Arturetto Landi. Some creations have grown out of his long relationship with the brand, and on its official social media Brancato describes him as “a legendary nose, a longstanding friend, someone who lives fragrance through his heart.”

The perfume concepts are also conveyed through stories printed on the packaging like instructions. All products are made in Italy, and every supplier is carefully selected from companies with Italian artisanal expertise. All the fragrances are also vegan and cruelty-free, made without animal testing.

Bottle and Packaging Design

Coreterno’s bottles are objects that say more than scent alone. The use of black glass combines practicality and aesthetics, blocking light to protect the quality of the fragrance over time. Each bottle bears a five-layer, embossed gold-foil label made exclusively for the brand by a long-established Italian label manufacturer. Combining seventeenth-century engravings, nineteenth-century portraits, and contemporary rock and pop, the design creates the experience of holding a work of art.

Mantra-like phrases such as “You create your own destiny” and “Choose love over fear” are inscribed on the bottles. This “magic of words” is a belief shared by the two founders, grounded in the idea that “words possess a subtle magic that can change people’s moods.”

The candle line is designed around the same philosophy. Natural organic wax is blended with vegetable wax, and natural cotton wicks are used. Black glass containers protect the lasting quality of the fragrance, while vintage-inspired black-and-white labels carry “phrases about moods and states of mind.” The stated burn time is at least 60 hours.

Coreterno’s eaux de parfum bring together rock, punk, the underground culture of the 1970s and classical art under Michelangelo Brancato’s artistic direction. The four fragrances from its perfume debut and the works that followed belong to the same evolving range, rather than separate fragrance collections.

The First Four Creations (2019 Debut)

The four fragrances unveiled to the world at Pitti Fragranze in 2019 form the starting point of Coreterno’s fragrance world.

• Punk Motel / Perfumer: Luca Maffei. Often called the brand’s “iconic creation,” it begins with a bright, delicate opening of white rose and bergamot, while salicylates add a faint saltiness and a nuance of sea breeze crossing a desert. Musk and vanilla envelop the base, and ambrette, or musk mallow, completes its distinctive harmony. With a woody-musky-floral structure, it is a fragrance for nights devoted to freedom.
• Hierba Nera / Perfumer: Luca Maffei. As its name, meaning “black herb” in Spanish, suggests, this is a deep-forest scent with a forbidden resonance. Opening with bergamot, cannabis, and nutmeg, it passes through a layered heart of frankincense, labdanum, cedar, and amber, before sinking into a substantial base of Atlas cedar, Texas cedar, agarwood (oud), and oakmoss. Woody and warmly creamy, it also has a floating quality, as though suspended in a fantastical mist.
• Rose and Me / Perfumer: Luca Maffei. A gothic rose perfume starring a deep black rose, layered with the sharp bite of geranium, jasmine, saffron, styrax, patchouli, and guaiac wood. Although it contains dark elements, it also retains a certain freshness.
• Catharsis / Perfumer: Luca Maffei. A spicy opening of clove, nutmeg, and neroli leads into a heart dominated by saffron, rose, ylang-ylang, and whisky. Its base of agarwood, guaiac, cedar, and a powerful leather accord is a “declaration of war” that seems to imprint itself on the skin. The combination is described as deliberately almost aggressive.

Subsequent Major Creations

Since the Pitti debut, the lineup has steadily expanded. The principal creations currently identifiable are as follows.

• Mystic Sugar: A gourmand, or sweet food-like fragrance, of orange, pineapple, cacao, vanilla, almond blossom, ginger, and cardamom. Cheerful and bold, it combines the nostalgia of penny sweets with sensuality.
• Freakincense: A fresh opening of lime, pink pepper, and violet gives way to a spicy heart of elemi, cashmeran, and frankincense, followed by a woody-spicy base of vetiver, patchouli, and labdanum.

Psychedelicious / Perfumer: Arturetto Landi

The free spirit of the 1970s hippie movement was Michelangelo Brancato’s starting point for Psychedelicious. He invited Landi to translate that vision of freedom without rules or limits into fragrance. Its story follows a rabbit into an enchanted forest.

Berries and flowers meet in a fruity-floral composition. Raspberry, currant, lychee and mango are joined by grapefruit, pink pepper and nutmeg. Rose, peony and magnolia open at the centre, leading to notes of vanilla, vetiver, sandalwood and ambergris. The vivid fruit and flowers gradually give way to the shade of woods.

Oceanoir / Perfumer: Luca Maffei

Oceanoir evokes a golden shoreline at sunset. A seaweed accord meets grapefruit, bergamot and bitter orange, opening with sea air and a clear citrus outline. Cassis, saffron and notes suggesting salt crystals are joined by davana, sea lily and bougainvillea, giving the marine theme a floral and fruity dimension.

Vetiver, sandalwood, pine balsam, amberwood and musk form the base. The woods prolong the warmth of sunlight on the sand, carrying the fragrance beyond the cool impression of water.

Night Idol / Perfumer: Arturetto Landi

The lights go down and the audience waits for the first note. Night Idol is an amber-woody fragrance built around the tension and confidence of the moment before stepping on stage. Mango, saffron and honey bring sweetness and spice to the opening. Rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, heliotrope and iris suggest a bouquet still damp after rain.

Agarwood gives the base its depth, accompanied by leather, patchouli and sandalwood. Vanilla, tonka, Sumatran benzoin, white musk, ambergris, castoreum and tree moss also appear among its fragrance notes. Bright fruit passes through flowers into a darker setting of wood, leather and resins.

Ultralove / Perfumer: Arturetto Landi

Ultralove is a creamy gourmand opening with hazelnut, praline, coffee, milk and strawberry. Jasmine and lily of the valley bring the brightness of white flowers into that edible sweetness. Vanilla, sugar, tonka, honey, white musk and sandalwood form the base, supported by moss and ambergris notes.

The fragrance’s story centres on the reassurance of being held in love. Flowers and woods surround the soft combination of nuts, milk and praline, giving that feeling a fragrant form.

Hypnorange / Perfumer: Luca Maffei

Sweet orange, bitter orange and grapefruit meet a creamy coconut note. Orange blossom and tobacco come together at the heart, followed by a base of vanilla, benzoin, black amber and musk.

Boldness and the contrast between light and shadow shape Hypnorange. Smoky tobacco and the sweetness of resins enter the progression from bright citrus peel to orange blossom, guiding it towards a warm finish. Its citrus-woody character also makes room for the sweetness of coconut and vanilla.

Godimenta / Perfumer: Luca Maffei

Carving a sculpture from a rough block of material becomes a metaphor for making fragrance in Godimenta. The opening notes of ginger, bergamot, peppermint and lemon leaves suggest sharp edges and cool curves. Raspberry leaves, jasmine, white fir balsam and a metallic rose form the heart.

Amber, cedarwood, deep woody notes and musk make up the base. The composition moves from refreshing green citrus towards the warmth of resin and wood.

No Sleep / Perfumer: Luca Maffei

No Sleep turns the exhilaration of a night too exciting for sleep into a bright white floral. Bergamot, hyacinth and white rose open the fragrance, followed by lily, jasmine and violet. Patchouli, vanilla and a white-wood accord form the base.

Its theme is the rush of speed and adrenaline. Vanilla and pale woods soften the heat of that nocturnal energy.

Hardkor / Perfumer: Arturetto Landi

Hardkor brings inner wildness and sensuality into the darkness of night through an amber-oud composition. Grapefruit, mango, cassis and passion fruit open onto a heart of jasmine, orchid and lily of the valley. Vanilla, frankincense, amber, white musk, leather, oud and patchouli form the base.

Against the fruity-floral opening, the later stages gather the dense textures of leather, incense and wood. Conceived as a genderless fragrance, it connects the force of its name with the sensual image of scent worn on skin.

Egocentrique / Perfumer: Ashley Santiago

Egocentrique explores radical self-love through the contrast between bright citrus and dark resins. Yuzu, green mandarin and bergamot lead to amyris from the Dominican Republic, Akigalawood and heliotrope. Spicy wood meets a creamy texture and the softness of powdery flowers.

Labdanum, a black-vanilla accord and musk form the base. The black vanilla has a dark character with faint smoky and leathery facets. Described as Dark Oriental, the fragrance combines a fresh beginning with the depth of resins, wood and vanilla, placing the self at the centre of its story.

Café Mémoire / Perfumer: Sidonie Grandperret

Café Mémoire is a gourmand about memories that remain after pain has softened, expressed through coffee, smoke and the warmth of milk and bread. Roasted coffee beans meet birch-tar smoke and a cold-ash accord, their edges rounded by creamy notes and the scent of bread. Warm milk and coffee are joined at the heart by brown sugar, nutmeg, clove and patchouli, before giving way to frankincense, tonka bean, sandalwood and vanilla. Its nostalgia includes smoke, earth and spice as well as the comfort of a sweet drink.

Discoflower / Perfumer: Emilie Bouge

Discoflower brings night-blooming flowers onto the dance floor, presenting the choice of happiness as an act of rebellion. A bright opening suggesting orchid, Asian pear and four o’clock flowers builds into tuberose absolute, jasmine absolute and a dendrobium-orchid note. Vanilla, musk and nuances of cherry blossom add softness. Cool fruit, dense white flowers and skin-enveloping sweetness capture the exuberance of a night out.

Incidentally…

A Collaboration with a Five-Star Hotel in Rome: An emblematic example of Coreterno’s brand presence is its collaboration with The St. Regis Rome. From autumn 2022 to spring 2023, the hotel’s Blue Library was transformed by Coreterno into a “Chambre des Merveilles,” or “Room of Wonders,” a pop-up experience filled with candles, perfumes, and cushions. The Visions of Grace collection followed in 2023. It included toiletries inspired by the iconic Punk Motel fragrance for the hotel’s suites, as well as tote bags, bucket hats, and loungewear featuring patterns in which Brancato reinterpreted the hotel’s classical architectural ornamentation.

Reading More Deeply into the Brand Name: “Coreterno” carries a double meaning. Core means “heart” in Roman dialect and, at the same time, “core” or “centre” in English. Eterno is Italian for “eternal.” Yet the founders also describe it as “an homage to Rome itself.” Given that Rome is called the Eternal City, the brand name can also be read as a declaration of love for the city.