Ara(gon)

Mallo perfumes

Among the haul from Esxence were three identical vials that looked unmarked. Yet I cannot resist a sample atomizer, so I sprayed a strip. It was sensational. Few things are more frustrating to me than a really good but unidentified perfume, so I took a picture and quickly sent it to my daughter, asking whether she remembered where we got them. She tactfully pointed out that there was in fact an inscription on the left-hand one. With my iPhone’s help (the macro function is great) I read it as “Ara,” and a minute later was fully wised up to the fact that all three were the same Mallo perfume, handed over at their stand.

This little puzzle got me started down a rabbit hole. The description on the Mallo website says it contains, among other things, some “pipirigallo flower that grows only in this region of the world,” i.e. Aragòn. Pipirigallo turns out to be sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia), which I remember from 19th century French novels, in those irritating passages where an author goes botanical, neglecting the fact that few readers grew up on farms. Sainfoin in French literature is always mentioned as a fragrant forage plant. I don’t remember ever smelling it, and as usual with odor profiles, the internet makes stuff up: sainfoin is variously listed as smelling of saffron, vanilla and asphalt. Given that it used to be common all over Europe, I was a bit surprised by the claim that it was local to Aragòn. This may be partly correct because sainfoin, sidelined as a forage plant fifty years ago because of poor yields, was first reintroduced in Aragòn in 2007 because of its positive effect on both soil and livestock. So, for all I know, Aragòn has cornered the sainfoin market.

The other rabbit hole was the name of the perfumer, A. Lasheras, decidedly un-Spanish at first sight, since there is no sh in Spanish. It turns out that it is in fact a condensed Las Heras, a name vaguely familiar to me from my mother’s stories, a general in Argentina’s war of independence and an avenue in Buenos Aires.

My nerdiness fully satisfied, let me now talk about the fragrance.

Technically Ara could be categorized as a floral bouquet, although the website blurb calls it a fougère. In French nomenclature the bouquet floral is an oversize posy, sufficiently large and complex to make it impossible for you to name its component parts. The art, as in Patou’s late and lamented Joy, is in the smoothness, the construction of one huge flower from a hundred small ones. The floral bouquet is cuteness writ large. Ara, however, is a very different thing: a choral floral. An underrated aspect of choral singing is its ability to scare the bejesus out of the listener.

I remember once going into the mud house that sits inside the cathedral at Loreto; the house was allegedly transported to that spot from the Holy Land by angels, somehow without making a hole in the wall. Within, I was inspecting the little pointy-nosed statue of the Virgin and her child and thinking that they looked like they were up to no good. While I was looking intently, a choir of 16 Franciscans had silently lined up in a square array behind me without me noticing. When they all started singing at once, I had the fright of my life. Five minutes of Silvestrov or Kancheli will convince you that a legion of voices is the most awe-inspiring thing in music.

To my mind, that is the intent of Ara: a choral blast that reminds you that nature is majestically powerful and indifferent to your little anxieties. Its beauty reminds me of Rauque (Roberto Greco/Chris Sheldrake), another scary green-floral perfume with the same urgency, only darker. This is Panic perfumery, as in the god, not the button.