Jessica Mara of L’Aventura Perfumes
Profile: I am a born maker. I love process and exploration. I love the excitement of creation and I love the tediousness of refinement. I engage so deeply in my work/life that sometimes it’s hard for me to discern where one stops and the other starts. My family is amazing and imperfect. I was raised very outside of the norm. My parents were ideological (as opposed to lifestyle) hippies, and instilled a very strong foundation of ethics, open-mindedness and whatever is the opposite of entitlement in me. Neither of my parents were artists, but they were both very creative in their own ways, and I was raised around a lot of artists and intellectuals – a lot of people who had made their way doing unconventional things and living unconventional lifestyles.
Young Jessica Mara
We moved around a lot, so I was constantly having to adjust to new places, new schools, new people which made me adaptable and self-reliant in a lot of ways. I learned to have very little fear of strangers, the unknown, unfamiliar, and I got very good at how to “read” people and rooms. I think that moving around made me comfortable with novelty, gave me a love of travel and going places where I don’t know anyone or speak the language. It also developed into a strong interest in psychology from experiencing all the different ways people live, how they see themselves, how they view the world, and how they function (or disfunction) within it.
L’Aventura Perfumes Mothlight, Sanctuary, Lions in the Library, Cotillion and The Faraway
Professionally I’ve done everything from being a working/showing artist, tending bar, silversmithing, being a business owner and a boss, working in the fashion industry, doing professional bookkeeping, working as a bespoke shoemaker and teaching shoemaking classes. Somehow all of this led to making perfume. What started very simply and as a quiet lifelong exploration in scent suddenly turned into an obsession. As all my life experiences, all my diverse interests reflect who I am they also inform and inspire the perfumes I create. I want to create scents that surprise and delight, that are unconventional and intriguing. I want to create scents that allow an escape from where you are or take you to a place to explore.
Scents that are novel, yet familiar. Scents that conjure imaginary spaces for you to make real or remembered spaces to return to. I want to create scents that reflect my experiences and mirror people the way I see them – complex, gorgeously flawed and perfect.
Writing formulas for L’Aventura Perfumes
On American Perfumery: I love old-guard perfume, old-world wines, and old-school rock-n-roll. But I also live by the belief that if only one choice (such as more traditional or Eurocentric perfumery) is offered then there is something bad going on. Not allowing growth and expansion in any field creates dogma, natural exclusions, rules and limitations which are the death of creativity. With American perfumery, different perspectives, narratives and inclusions abound. For some reason Americans (for better and worse), are often irreverent and tend to make their own rules and (for better and worse) to get away with it. I think that’s partially because we value (for better and worse) personal expression over almost anything, and we are allowed to choose (for better and worse) our own truths and meanings. That all said, because we are inspired by the experiences of a road less traveled, American Perfumers tend to “make it their own” and forge new paths, the results are often not just your same old, but are fresh, highly creative, bold and inspiring.
And I love being a part of that.
Walt Whitman via Wikipedia
Favorite American Artist: This is the most unfair question ever. But today I am going to go with Walt Whitman. Lots to love here – wacky poetic form, an awesome mashup of humanism, transcendentalism and realism, strange symbology, overt sexuality… But really I think the reason I love him so much has more to do with the fact that he was able to show where he (and therefore give a clue to the rest of us) was standing: a glorious, undefined, ecstatic being, his persona completely indistinguishable from his work, a living, throbbing, filthy, mundane, godlike, contradictory embodiment of art and flesh and spirit that almost every one of us can identify with.
And I think that’s why he’s everywhere, not just in the arts, but everywhere – Whitman on postage stamps, postcards, and matchbook covers and in cartoons, Whitman in advertising for cigarettes, cigars, coffee, whiskey, insurance. Whitman’s name on schools, hotels, bridges, apartment buildings, summer camps, parks, truck stops, common rooms in guest houses, corporate centers, AIDS clinics, political think tanks. And, get this – back in the day, inexpensive pocket editions of Whitman were distributed to workers and farmers during the Depression, and free copies were given to the American Armed forces during World War II.
Because we resonate. We relate, deeply. We feel within ourselves a wild heart, a cosmos, that we are disorderly, fleshly, and glorious. It totally makes me want to cry yet also gives me hope.
—Jessica Mara, Owner & Perfumer of L’Aventura Perfumes
L’Aventura Perfumes Lions in the Library and sample set of Mothlight, Sanctuary, Lions in the Library, Cotillion and Faraway
Thanks to Jessica, we have a draw for one 50 ml bottle of Lions in the Library and one sample set of L’Aventura’s full catalogue of five fragrances for two registered users in the US and Canada only. Register here.To enter the draw, you must be a registered reader. Please leave a comment with what you found fascinating about Jessica’s path to perfumery and where you live. Draw closes 12/16/2022
L’Aventura Perfumes Lions in The Library Notes: Labdanum, bitter orange, old books, cistus, cashmeran, civet
Jessica Mara is 171th in our American Perfumer Series, which officially began with Dawn Spencer Hurwitz of DSH Perfumes on July 11, 2011.
L’Aventura Perfumes is now sold at the American Perfumer
All photos belong to Jessica Mara unless otherwise noted.
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