Italian skincare products, like everything else Made in Italy, are among the world’s best. Stick around to find out the best Italian skincare brands you can rely on.
Besides the fantastic cuisine, luxury fashion, and famous luxury car brands, skincare and makeup products from Italy are also front-runners in the industry.
As early as the 1800s, the culture of skin care was already present in Italy. From Kiko Milano to the historical Santa Maria Novella, one can really attest to the characteristic time-honored skincare and beauty industry of the key places in Italy like Capri, Milan, and the famed city of Florence.
Italy may be noted for its fashion influence, but one must keep in mind that it was one of the pioneers of the rose water – or acqua di rose, as they call it in their native tongue.
From toners and lotions to purifying masks and anti-ageing serums, skincare brands from Italy do not fail to deliver the best of care your skin deserves.
14 Best Italian Skincare Brands
Let’s have a look at 14 of the best Italian skincare brands you can rely on for that perfect, glowing skin we’re all dying for.
1. KIKO Milano
Founded in 1997 by Antonio Percassi, KIKO Milano has since extended from cosmetics to skincare.
The brand has always adhered to its “Made in Italy” identity, which is apparent in its promise of delivering the best of skincare with safe and effective ingredients in each and every product the company manufactures. What’s more, their high-quality products do not cost an arm and a leg.
KIKO Milano is truly one of the best Italian skincare brands you can buy without having to sacrifice your budget.
2. Skin & Co.
With its prime aim of delivering natural and guilt-free products, Skin & Co. Roma is a sophisticated and advanced botanical body and skincare company founded in Milan, Italy.
The company uses only natural ingredients like licorice, seaweed, and olive oil, among others. Its signature and flagship main ingredient is the black winter truffle, as they swear by its antioxidant properties.
3. Borghese Roma
Founded by Princess Marcella Borghese of Italy, the iconic Italian skincare brand has been producing high-quality and luxurious skin products for over six decades.
Since the early 1960s, Borghese has redefined the at-home spa experience. From skin care to “self-care,” the product’s vision began with its time-tested iconic formulas hence the “me time” slogan of the company.
4. Perlier
If you are into Italian beauty brands, you would easily recognize Perlier’s iconic rounded logo with “Perlier” name inside the circle.
Founded in Milan in 1940, Perlier has been the Italian vanguard of environment-friendly skin care products with its meticulously-made skin care products composed of pure selected ingredients using science in order to render pleasure and taste.
The company’s mantra is “Natural Recipes.” With the help of Perlier’s scientific research group, high-quality products wrapped in attractive packaging designs is one of the company’s major claims to fame.
5. Pupa Milano
Pupa Milano or Pupa is an Italian skincare company founded in 1975 by Angelo Gatti in Milan, Italy.
Another Italian brand that upholds the value of environment, Pupa is know for its slogan “Respect the ocean.” They use sustainable sea products like algae and seaweeds responsibly.
Specializing in products for safe sunbathing, Perlier products are packaged with 100 percent recyclable materials.
6. Santa Maria Novella
Founded as a cosmetics and fragrance company by Dominican friars in 1221 in Florence, Italy, Santa Maria Novella is one of the oldest pharmaceutical skincare brands in the world. The brand has extended to wellness and beauty products since.
The vision of the brothers in faith began with the inception of Santa Maria Novella’s iconic product Acqua di Rose, a scented rose water used for sanitizing rooms and for personal care (for moisturization) created in 1381. Novella has become a world-renowned brand since.
With its 800 years of rich and colorful history, you can never go wrong with S.M. Novella’s products.
7. Carthusia
Besides its artisanal niche perfumes, Carthusia is known for its super luxurious bath soaps wrapped in colorful parchment paper. When you think of luxury bath experience, no Italian beauty and skincare brand compares to the opulent quality of Carthusia.
Founded in Capri, Italy in 1948, Carthusia practices a centuries-old knowledge in order to create a culture of beauty and wellness. Inspired from a religious place called the Carthusian Monastery of St. James, the Carthusia is Italy’s piece of history that continues to flourish up to this day.
8. Collistar
One of the best Italian skincare brands, Collistar was established in 1983 in Milan. It is known for its state-of-the-art formulas and cutting-edge beauty treatments.
Quoted as Italy’s best-selling brand, Collistar is committed to crafting beauty products that are environment-friendly, using sustainable ingredients that respect both the skin and the planet. It’s a “total beauty brand” that aims to make you to look as good as you feel.
9. Manetti & Roberts
Rose water was merely used for sanitizing rooms before Henry Roberts developed Acqua alle Rose (rose water cleanser) into a skin glowing and revitalizing agent in 1867.
The iconic Acqua alle Rose was instrumental to the birth of a new facial skincare line consisting of 95% natural ingredients. It was the Boro Talcum formula, a luxurious powder that has easily become a staple in Italian beauty.
Established in Florence, Italy, in 1921, Manetti & Roberts was a product of the merging of two different pharmaceutical brands – Manetti and Henry Roberts. Today, this Italian skincare brand is one of the country’s best-known makers of rose water.
11. L’Erbolario
As one of the first phytocosmetics company and leader in Italian market of plant-based products in the entirety of Italy, L’Erbolario is one of its kind when it comes to producing eco-friendly products that reflect an unmistakable style that represents natural beauty.
Founded in 1978 in Lodi, Italy, as a small artisan herbalist shop, L’Erbolario has maintained its strict process of creating beauty and skincare products, retracing family recipes in order to achieve their mission of a company that nurtures not only the consumers but the environment as well.
During the early days of the company, founders Franco Bergemaschi and wife Daniella Villa would spend days on end in the country fields of Lodi looking for wild herbs that would later become the brand’s essential ingredients to keep up with the demand of herbal medicine-based skincare.
Having gone on a journey of constant progress, it made L’Erbolario a renowned and affirmed international brand. Their products are all 100% Made in Italy – all of which are good for the environment and animals, too.
With 190 shops (16 overseas), L’Erbolario exports its products to 45 countries all over the world.
12. Ortigia Sicilia
Inspired by Italy’s history and picturesque greeneries as a tropical region, founder Sue Townsend founded Ortigia Sicilia as a small Italian soap and scent company in Sicily in the year 2006.
Ortigia Sicilia started to gain international recognition with its luxurious and well-scented soaps as well as its creams and lotions, and they even went on to making candles.
Ortigia is also a company that uses natural products, making sure the production of their soaps and other skincare products do not hurt the environment. Some of their signature natural ingredients include olive oil, vegetable glycerin, and organic colors from plants and fruits.
To maintain the quality of the products, Ortigia hires small family companies to man the production, hence the uncompromised quality that the consumers get. You can never go wrong with these Italian skincare products.
Historically, the name Ortigia was taken from the small island Ortigia that lies on the edge of the ancient city of Siracussa, on the southeastern coast of Sicily.
13. Acqua di Parma
Parma is a city in Italy famous for its violet landscape. As a company that first invested in perfume making, Acqua di Parma suited to the idea of naming the company after a place rooted in cultural tradition in 1916.
Acqua di Parma is known for its signature yellow hat box packaging in their products, from its ever-opulent fragrances, the brand expanded to skincare years later.
One characteristic of Acqua di Parma’s skincare products is that they are heavily scented that most of its followers love. From body treats like face care, face scrubs, and moisturizing creams, Acqua di Parma later on specialized in anti-ageing products that – according to study results – show visible and improved lines, skin texture, and firmness.
Acqua di Parma products are a fresh wake-up regimen for everyone’s senses, making it one of the best skincare brands from Italy.
14. Acca Kappa
Probably the household name for Italian skincare and beauty, Acca Kappa is definitely one for the books.
Dedicated to its 100% natural, vegan, organic skincare, Acca Kappa offers a complete treatment for cleansing and skincare.
The company is imbued with a rich and colorful history that spans over 150 years, starting in a small factory in Treviso, Italy. With the passion for simplicity and authentic beauty, Acca Kappa has been Italy’s most trusted skincare brand having products made in nature and tradition.
This Italian skincare brand uses only natural ingredients in their range of ultra-rich natural skincare that helps skin achieve optimum hydration, brightness, and elasticity. With argan oil and jojoba oil as the two main ingredients, Acca Kappa products help fight dryness and fine lines naturally.
Since the early beginnings of the company through its founder Hermann Krüll, combining nature and tradition is the key to Acca Kappa’s success as a major lifestyle brand in Italy.