Mallow

Note Profile

Botanical 2 perfumes

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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

Mallow smells soft, powdery and charming, a gentle floral rather than a heady one. A musky, skin-like warmth sits underneath the petal softness. A faint sweetness runs through it too, closer to heliotrope than to sugar. The real flower is close to scentless, so this soft floral character is a built accord rather than something extracted.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~7h lasting

Family Floral, Amber · Musk · Leather

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

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ScentArt

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Mallow from materials such as:

Damascenone plum · tobacco · sugar

Smell words come from published sources.

Allergens perfumes with this note can list: Damascenone

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else, and may or may not contain the allergens above.

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.