Mallow

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Mallow is a soft, powdery floral with a musky skin warmth under it. The flower itself is close to scentless, so what brands print as mallow is a built accord, not an extract.

Scent Profile

Powdery leads, because both of the perfumer's descriptions put it first: 'soft, powdery and charming' and 'musky floral softness'. Floral is the petaly charm, soft rather than heady, and it is deliberately not white_floral because no source reaches for indole, jasmine or tuberose. Clean_musk is the musk half of 'musky floral softness' and matches the musk named in the fragrance base. Sweet_vanillic is the sweetness Vasnier names as one of the three things he was balancing, and it is heliotrope-shaped rather than sugary. Below that, green is the petaly freshness the violet leaf carries, kept low because it belongs to the composition around the accord rather than the accord itself. Nutty, creamy_woody, animalic, earthy, aquatic_ozonic and lactonic all sit with wide spreads: the heliotrope almond, the orris root, the faint leaf musk of Musk Mallow, and the peaty moor of the roasted oak base are each named once by one source and none is stated as a property of the mallow note.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~7h lasting

Family Floral, Amber · Musk · Leather

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

There is no mallow extract. Haeckels' perfumer worked with the raw common mallow flower, Malva sylvestris, while building a fragrance and calls its scent 'very subtle'. The one Malva with a documented smell is Musk Mallow, and Maud Grieve's A Modern Herbal places that smell in the leaves, not the flowers: 'it emits from its leaves a faint, musky odour, especially in warm weather, or when drawn through the hand'. What perfumery calls mallow is composed. Givaudan perfumer Yann Vasnier, on record for Jo Malone's Mallow on the Moor, says he 'presented a mallow accord' and then describes the fragrance built around it: orris and heliotrope in the heart for softness, violet leaf on top for petaly freshness, roasted oak and musk in the base. The perfumer's own account puts orris, heliotrope and musk doing the work of the smell.

Usage in Perfumery

A soft-floral heart material. Vasnier states the brief plainly: 'our priority was creating a sense of softness and comfort while capturing the petaly charm of the purple mallow flower', balancing 'softness, sweetness, and powderiness'. It is used where a floral should read comforting and cushioned rather than heady, and it sits easily beside orris, heliotrope, violet leaf and musk.