It was back in the Roaring Twenties, the Great War was almost a memory and everywhere there were traces of a return to normalcy. Jazz was becoming popular in the States, while women and flappers began to escape the shadows in which the male universe had always relegated them. Meanwhile, the world changed its appearance following the dictates of the new taste, the art deco, definitively triumphant at the international exhibition in Paris.
All this was just an echo in Catania, a Sicilian province, posing as a big town, while being only a little more than a suburb compared to the great international capitals.
Under the shadow of a stone elephant, a statue symbol of Catania, and of the volcano, the Etna, two teenagers, Giuseppina and Sebastiano, had been looking at each other for a while, only exchanging a shy smile and a lowered gaze. One day, Sebastiano decided to officially declare himself. Wearing his Sunday suit, armed with courage, he lovingly chooses a rose from the florist and goes to the record store where his young love works. At the closing hour Giuseppina pretends not having understood and turns quickly towards her house. While chasing her, he catches up and offers her the rose. She smiles and stealthily scans her suitor in all directions, to snatch some details that could say something more about his nature and his condition. The gaze lingers on the breast pocket of his jacket, from which two small cigars stand out carelessly. Thanks to that romantic encounter Giuseppina and Sebastiano got officially engaged, until their love was crowned with marriage.
Later in time, when Giuseppina wanted to lovingly provoke her husband, she would bring up the story of their first encounter, saying that Sebastiano had been as loving in offering her a rose as he was incautious in carrying his cigars, overwhelming with their scent, the delicate smell of the rose. At that point Sebastiano always countered by saying that it wasn’t possible, because he wasn’t smoking cigars, but above all he had carefully chosen the best smelling rose for her!
This story is a clear example of how reality is often perceived in different ways and that the personal point of view always remains in everyone’s memory.
I have heard this story countless times directly from Giuseppina, my grandmother, considering that Sebastiano, my grandfather, died two years before I was born. 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.
For this new fragrance I wanted a name linked to music, just to remember the place where they first met. I searched through the names of the songs of the time, but none ignited my imagination. Then Rita Hayworth came to mind with her stunning performance of Amado Mio in Gilda. I watched the scene again from the movie and I immediately felt that the name of this song should be the name of the fragrance. Perhaps because I only heard the story from my grandmother, with a tone between ironic and nostalgic, with the right amount of melancholy that only time can make both sweet and poignant at the same time. I believe that this song, despite being chronologically more recent than their meeting, can correctly interpret the balance between 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.
Amado Mio bursts into the air with a green and floral accord in which the dark and liqueur tones of a red rose intertwine with the sap of its leaves, but also with the earthy darkness of a geranium with metallic, fruity and subterranean facets. Tobacco is already announced in the top notes by the aromatic and ambery scent of clary sage, but it is fully expressed in the honeyed sweetness of the base in which Tonka bean, Helichrysum and Bran absolute give greedy, aromatic and deep facets. Woody notes of cedarwood and vetiver give structure to the base which lies on a bed of amber and musk, with silky and fruity undertones.
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 . Two souls dissolved and instilled in a single liquid, enclosed in a body, that of a bottle red like the flame of love, but transparent like its purity.
Antonio Alessandria
Amado Mio is the tenth fragrance in Antonio Alessandria Parfums line.