Posted by Acqua di Sardegna
From the Mediterranean to Alghero, from a passion for perfume to the birth of a Maison. The journey of Mauro Aprea, CEO of Officina Profumiera Sarda and artistic director of the Acqua di Sardegna fragrances.
Some journeys end when a destination is reached. Others begin at the very moment you decide to stay.
Mauro Aprea's belongs to the second kind.
First comes the Mediterranean, crossed along different routes and landfalls. Then comes Sardinia. Meeting the Island becomes a choice and, later, a project: to tell, through perfume, what a landscape, a culture and an identity are able to leave inside us.
It is from this intuition that Acqua di Sardegna takes shape.
Telling a feeling through perfume
Today Aprea is CEO of Officina Profumiera Sarda and artistic director of the Acqua di Sardegna fragrances. But at the origin of the Maison there is, first of all, a personal relationship with the Island, a love at first sight.
Some people turn a feeling into words, some into music, some into images. Mauro Aprea chose to tell it through perfumes.
A choice that already holds the philosophy of the project: nature and culture are two sides of the same coin.
Creating a fragrance inspired by Sardinia, then, does not simply mean trying to reproduce the smell of the sea or of the Mediterranean scrub. It means observing, remembering, studying and finally interpreting. Because a perfumer's work begins long before the formula. It begins with what he is able to see where others merely look.
Instinct and research
In the artistic direction of Acqua di Sardegna, two dimensions that might seem opposite live side by side: instinct and research, creativity and care. Perfume, after all, requires imagination but also rigor.
Behind a composition there are raw materials to get to know, accords to build, balances to find. A path made of experience, sensitivity and dedication, in which tradition meets the search for new olfactory harmonies. This is where the initial intuition becomes a craft.
A memory, a landscape or a suggestion must find the notes capable of representing them. Then those notes must meet, talk to one another and turn into something that, on the skin, can evoke an emotion.
An artistic director before an entrepreneur
Mauro Aprea is the artistic director of the Acqua di Sardegna fragrances and takes part in building the olfactory identity of the Maison.
Over the years the language has evolved. The first interpretations of Mediterranean nature have been joined by a more complex research, able to cross history, myth and memory until it reaches artistic perfumery.
Collections and compositions change, but the goal is to answer the question: how do you turn a story into perfume?
This is perhaps the research that best tells the story of Aprea's path.
He did not choose to enclose the essence of the island, but preferred to identify, each time, a fragment of its identity and offer an interpretation of it.
The journey continues
Almost twenty years after the birth of Acqua di Sardegna, that journey which began in front of the Mediterranean has not come to an end. It has simply changed shape.
The routes travelled became experiences, the experiences became ideas, and the ideas became fragrances. And Alghero, from a place in which to stop, has become the point from which to keep setting out.
Because for those who work with perfume, research does not end with a successful formula. Every new composition opens a possibility, suggests another story, points to a new route.
And perhaps this is exactly the trait that unites the traveller and the artistic director: the curiosity to look for what has not yet been told.
And to try, once again, to tell it without words.
