The Paglieri Fragrance House was officially founded in the second half of the eighteen hundreds in Alexandria, ancient Piedmont city between the river Po and the Liguria Apennines, but the perfumery activity of the Paglieri family had already started at the beginning of 1800 in a laboratory in Vittorio Emanuele Plaza.
For more than fifty years the clients were the same Alexandrines who had appreciated the creams, the powders and the perfumes that the Paglieri family produced almost in exclusive for its own fellow citizens. In 1876 Ludovico Paglieri, nephew of the founder of the enterprise, realizing that the time was right, expanded the firm by distributing the products beyond the narrow limits of the city, into the whole region, and subsequently throughout Italy.

The popularity of the House came after the First world war, when Fragrance became an essential element for ladies’ toilette and the market tended to stretch into the popular classes. A famous brand was Acqua di Marengo whichthe Paglieri family already produced in the eighteen hundreds, while national success was sealed in 1926 with the addition of the talcum powder Blue Fern, a brand which was subsequently attributed to a whole line of powders, perfumes and creams.
The Paglieri Fragrance House also became popular for the powders that it produced in great quantity: Velluto di Hollywood and Felce Azzurra were the brands of greatest success in the period 1940-1950 and Paglieri relied on these so much that the decrease of interest for this type of cosmetic in the1960s caused a true shock for the House.
The fragrance production, in so many years of existence, was various and  followed the fashions and the demands of consumers, without flashes of genius or adventurous solutions from the company. The Paglieri products were often proposed in elegant and eye-catching confections: symbolic was a cork in the form of a corolla which characterized a good part of its perfumery production. Besides Felce Azzurra, Fior di Loto, Acqua Gaia, Paradiso Perduto, Fruscio di veli were commercialised.

The only "incident" of the company was the error of an advertising manifesto, immediately after the last war, a famous artist, Boccasile, interpreted the Paglieri Fragrances by drawing a female figure with naked breast removing a coverlet of flowers. The image had a troubled life: it suffered censorships and rehashes, for then to become a rarity and today an aspired collectors item.
Paglieri is still active, with an entirely new production and an establishment in the province in Alexandria. It is one of the few italian fragrance companies, of ancient origin, that managed to overcome the 1970s without injury by knowing how to suit the times and the demands of consumers.