Antonio Alessandria Amado Mio display, photo by Ermano Picco from Pitti Fragranze 2022
Amado mio
Love me forever
And let forever begin tonight
Amado mio
When we’re together
I’m in a dream world
Of sweet delight
Many times I’ve whispered
“Amado mío”
It was just a phrase that I heard in plays
I was acting a part
But now, when I whisper
“Amado mío”
Can’t you tell I care by the feeling there?
For it comes from my heart. “Amado Mio,” from Gilda, Columbia Pictures, 1949
It was in Catania – a little town “posing as a big city” – that they exchanged their first, furtive glances, met, and as tends to happen in tales that begin this way, fell in love. She worked in the local record store; he wore sports jackets that sported cigars in their breast pocket. But for a seeming eternity, it was all glances and sighs. Until one day, he summons his courage and, armed with a single red rose, goes to ask her …, well, he hadn’t got that far yet. But she would know from the bloom in his hand his tender intent. Many years later, when they were old and married, Giuseppina would tease her husband by reminding him how on the day they met, the smell of cigars had overwhelmed that lovely rose. And every time, he would deny he ever smoked cigars back then.
Amado Mio, Antonio Alessandria’s paean to his grandparents, captures the fond recollections of Giuseppina and Sebastiano in a perfumed union of smudgy, sensual rose and smoky tobacco.
Perfumer Antonio Alessandria
As Alessandria relates, “About a century after that fateful encounter, I wanted to give a new balance to the two points of view of my grandparents, to find the perfect harmony between rose and tobacco, between the delicacy of my grandfather’s masculine spirit and my grandmother’s femininity with no frills.” Alessandria wanted to name the perfume for music, which, along with scent, gives memory its time stamps. He settled on a song sung by Rita Hayworth in the 1946 film, Gilda, which, although it came out many years after his grandparents married, had an irony and nostalgia for Alessandria that perfectly encapsulated “the femininity of the rose, the rough sweetness of tobacco, the mischievous innocence of the meeting of two teenagers, the dreamy sensuality of a nascent couple, the comforting softness of a memory of the past that was unique and all-encompassing but will never come back.”
Rita Hayworth sings “Amado Mio” in Gilda
Antonio Alessandro Amado Mio opens not at the beginning of this love story, but smack in the middle, at the point where the rose is being proffered under a hot Sicilian sun. Almost immediately, the flower’s the rose scent is joined by velvety geranium and a cheeky pelt of raspberries. Unlike Miller Harris’ Rose en Noir, which also brings together rose and raspberry in the top notes, Antonio Alessandria Amado Mio does not head into romantic territory but gets down to business introducing its main players in a tumble of masculine aromatic notes bumping up against a particularly forceful, dimensional rose.
Sophia Loren and her husband of 44 years Carlos Ponti via Life 1964
The juicy softness of flower and the jubilant bounce of berry are hugged by aromatic notes of young green geranium, lavender, and clary sage. Rather than muting the rose note, these savory odors bring a gentlemanly masculinity that skirts around the rose without than overwhelming it. Now, let me be clear about the rose; this is no fairytale flower, but a winey, dark beauty as full-bodied as Sophia Loren, with a tangy, boozy modern edge. Setting this dimensional, at times, metallic blossom (I would imagine there’s rose oxide in the composition) against such classic fougere-like notes neatly introduces a sense of modern looking back.
Image (Pixabay / annca)
In the heart, there’s clove and tobacco along with a milkiness that like comes from the early stages of tonka bean. Surprisingly, I find that the raspberry note has gotten stronger, which continues the tension between the sensual rose accord and the smoky, dried grass smell of tobacco. Alessandria explains that, “From a technical point of view, I wanted to have two vertical fundamental chords revealing all the facets during the evaporation, in order to give the idea of a vortex, like that of love, which in its whirlwind reveals the characteristics of the two souls, while making them inseparable and essential.”
The base brings out an oud-like cedarwood and dark, rooty vetiver, which give Antonio Alessandria Amado Mio a dusky heft and bitterness that balances nicely with some raisin-y tonka and subtle amber. I don’t know if the irony is intended, but, by dry-down, the feminine and masculine notes have nearly changed places. As a rose fragrance, Amado Mio leans into woody, masculine territory along the lines of Le Labo Rose 31. Unexpectedly, the more feminine aspects of the fragrance are represented in the raspberry, which cheerfully pops back up from time to time, and the sweet tonka and amber notes in the heart and base. Or perhaps, this is the distillation of that love over time; the interplay between sweet and sharp, hard and gentle, sensual and edgy. I have written numerous times of Alessandria’s mastery of fragrance storytelling and here again is the proof.
Notes: Green notes, lavender, raspberry, clary sage, rose, geranium, clove, honeyed tobacco, cedarwood, vetiver, helichrysum, wheat absolute, tonka bean, ambery and musky notes.
Disclaimer: Travel bottle of Amado Mio kindly gifted to me by Antonio Alessandria. My opinions, as always, are my own.
Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor
Antonio Alessandria Amado Mio via the perfumer
Thanks to the largesse of Antonio Alessandria Parfums, we have a 50 ml bottle of Amado Mio a registered ÇaFleureBon reader in the EU or U.S. To be eligible please leave a comment on this site with what strikes you about Amado Mio based on Lauryn’s review, where you live, and whether you have a favourite Antonio Alessandria perfume. Draw closes 3/6/2023.
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Editor Ermano Picco awarded Antonio Alessandria Amada Mio a top 10 best fragrance of 2022 and Antonio Alessandria Artisan of 2022
Antonio Alessandria composed Rusty Vibes for ÇaFleureBon’s 10th Anniversary which was also featured in Steven Gavrielatos’ Top Ten Tropical Perfumes
Please read Lauryn’s 3 You should be wearing Gattopardo, Fleurs et Flammes and Fara
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