The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Allegro arrived in 2025 as part of Harb's ongoing expansion into a wider catalogue of compositions. The name itself, meaning brisk and lively in Italian, hints at tempo without giving away direction. Harb's frames each release through personal narrative, and Allegro continues that thread: a scent built around the interplay of edible warmth and aromatic cool. The fragrance draws on the house's signature palette, working with raw materials that lend themselves to a composition interested in contrast rather than allegiance. It's an oriental in structure but keeps the lightness expected from contemporary unisex releases, never settling too heavily into any one tradition.
What makes Allegro interesting is how it balances anise's sharp licorice snap against the soft, almost confectionary warmth of hazelnut. That pairing alone is unusual, leaning into the gourmand-adjacent without tipping into dessert territory. The cypress in the opening keeps it from going soft, adding a resinous green backbone that steadies everything before the violet and neroli arrive. The base, white musk and vanilla with ambroxan, takes that steadiness and turns it into something quietly persistent.
The evolution
The first minutes belong to the anise and hazelnut, and they're loud about it. There's a brief, almost boozy sweetness, the kind of warmth you associate with a candle in a room you've just walked into. Then the cypress pulls it taut, stretching the sweetness into something more grown, more deliberate. The heart opens soon after, with violet arriving first, powdery and a touch soapy, then neroli sliding in with its orange-flower calm. Vetiver grounds it from underneath, holding the heart steady with a dry, earthy pull. What surprises is how the violet never fully fades, even as the base takes over. White musk and vanilla settle into a close, intimate drydown, but the violet keeps threading through, dusty and present, a whisper that won't quite leave.
Cultural impact
Allegro sits within Harb's catalogue as one of the house's more restrained compositions, built around warmth and texture rather than spectacle. It appeals to wearers who want something close to the skin, a scent that performs inward rather than projecting outward. The hazelnut-cypress pairing gives it a distinctive character, combining the toasted softness of nut with the dry, resinous pull of green wood. That combination feels intentional, offering comfort without sentimentality and depth without weight.
