The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Luca Maffei built MyLO around a single idea: what if the white lily just spoke for itself? Not as an accent, not buried in a list of supporting notes, but as the actual subject. The name says it, MyLO, my Laboratorio Olfattivo, a fragrance that belongs to the wearer as much as the house. Released in 2016, it arrived with the kind of confidence that comes from knowing exactly what it is.
White lily in perfumery tends toward the abstract, reconstructed, interpreted, softened into something that fits a brief. Maffei went the other direction. The lily here reads authentic: creamy in the way real lilies are creamy, with a slight green undertone that keeps it from floating off into abstraction. The supporting florals, jasmine, rose, iris, don't crowd the stage. They offer context. The warm base of benzoin and vanilla gives the whole thing somewhere to land, something to hold onto after the flowers do their work.
The evolution
The opening hits bright and citrus-forward: bergamot, lemon, a whisper of pink pepper. It doesn't announce itself so much as arrive. Within minutes, the lily takes over, not a gradual transition, more like a handoff. The heart holds for a good three to four hours, all white petals and soft green stems. Then the base does what warm bases do: settles in. Benzoin, white amber, a quiet vanilla that smells less like dessert and more like skin that remembers the sun. The whole thing lasts most of a workday. On fabric, longer.
Cultural impact
In the landscape of niche florals, MyLO occupies honest territory. It's not trying to deconstruct the white lily or reinvent what a floral can mean. It simply presents one, done well, without apology. That kind of directness reads as confidence in a market full of conceptual fragrances, and resonates with wearers who want the flower, not the footnote.
The House
Laboratorio OlfattivoLaboratorio Olfattivo is an independent Italian niche house founded in Rome in 2009 by creative director Roberto Drago and business partner Daniela Caon. The house operates as a creative platform, collaborating with perfume craftsmen who work autonomously under the Laboratorio Olfattivo name rather than operating through an in-house perfumer. Each fragrance exists as its own standalone work, not part of a numbered collection. The house is recognizable by a characteristic dark amber, vetiver, and resin signature anchored by a consistent base structure across releases. Arancia Rossa stands out as a vivid, saturated blood-orange perfume built over that warm amber-vetiver foundation. The catalog spans orientals with deep burnished woods and resins alongside brighter citrus compositions. The output is deliberately unhurried, with one to three new fragrances arriving most years, and the two founders remain the sole creative force behind the label. Roberto's family background runs through the Italian perfume trade, reportedly through his father Luigi Drago's work running a perfume distribution house. By contrast, Laboratorio Olfattivo itself has never sought outside investment, remaining entirely founder-owned and operated. The self-funded structure means完全没有外部资金压力，创意方向不受投资者期望驱动。This shape shifting has translated into a genuine point of view that longtime followers recognize in the catalog. The founding story holds particular interest within the niche fragrance community because the label avoids the conventional channels of beauty entrepreneurism. There is no private label background, no pivot from cosmetics, and no celebrity angle. Instead, a distribution professional and a marketing executive with a shared passion built something from scratch in Rome and held to it for over a decade. The name Laboratorio Olfattivo translates roughly to olfactory laboratory. It signals that the house is understood as a working studio for assembling aromatic materials rather than a heritage brand performing its own mythology. The founder-driven ethos has also meant that the house has remained genuinely small in team size, operating with a long-term perspective rather than chasing market relevance. Every creative decision filters through the two founders, contributing to a catalog that feels internally motivated rather than assembled by committee.
The Creator
Luca MaffeiMaffei's signature weaves elegant iris accords with unexpected structural choices. He's known for introducing cold metallic character through ambroxan, creating fragrances that feel simultaneously refined and contemporary.
