Hot Take Tuesday: Valentino Born in Roma Names are Getting Out of Hand

In 2019, Valentino launched their new collection of perfumes called Born in Roma, an homage to the city where the fashion house was founded. The line embodying freedom of expressions and living by your own rules began with Valentino Donna Born In Roma and Valentino Uomo Born in Roma for women and men respectively.

In 2026, we’re at 10 perfumes each for men and women and the names are getting more ridiculous… Here are all the 20 (Yes, 20) Valentino Born in Roma perfumes released in the years since its inception:

*Limited Edition Perfumes, not part of the permanent Born in Roma lineup

Too Many Born in Roma?

The only year without a new Born in Roma was 2020 and that may have only been because of the global pandemic that directly hit our sense of smell. But Valentino compensated for the loss of 2 new Born in Roma in 2020 with four every year from 2023.

It was also 2023 when they decided to launch a limited edition duo– Donna and Uomo each year. With two new feminine and masculine editions added every year, we’re now at 4 new perfumes just in the Born in Roma Collection.

All designer brands seem to be focused on flankers of their popular perfumes rather than original creations. But Valentino’s path with the Born in Roma collection seems more excessive in comparison as they create a feminine and masculine version of each fragrance DNA every year.

Flanker Fatigue

Creating the same thing in a slightly different version to sell it as something brand new isn’t unique to the perfume industry. The tech industry releases a new set of phones each year with marginal improvements in features and colours. A new Pantone Color Of The Year is set for manufacturers of every industry to follow as a trend each year. A chocolate bar (Dubai Chocolate) or a toy (Labubu) goes viral and everyone must make other foods and beverages and perfumes with the same flavor…

While I have chosen Valentino to write about, they aren’t unique in creating slightly different versions of the same perfume each year. It was why I decided to exclude flankers in my retrospective of perfumes released in 2025. There is pressure for fragrance houses to follow trends– keep up, or be forgotten. 2026 seems to be a year of fruity flankers, Purple Melancholia using plum and coconut in their women’s and men’s fragrances respectively.

Fragrance is incredibly subjective and that hurts production costs. From a business point-of-view, it’s easy to see why it’s beneficial to the bank on the success of a fragrance to boost other fragrances to success. Other similar, but different enough fragrances to capture a portion of the market untapped by the previous flanker(s).

But when you release 20 perfumes in a collection, regular or limited, you risk boring the audience. You also risk having incredibly long names. Like Valentino Donna Born in Roma Purple Melancholia.

For the chronically perfume-obsessed, it’s easy to remember them as one Purple Melancholia for women and one for men. But when you’re a casual-enjoyer of perfumes, a name as long as that risks making the fragrance forgettable even if the juice in the bottle is splendid.

Do you have any hot takes about Valentino Born in Roma names? Hot takes about perfumes in general? Let Perfume Mag know in the comments…