As one of the world's most successful polo players, Nacho Figueras is constantly traveling. In fact, his wife, model, photographer, and fellow polo enthusiast Delfina Blaquier, says their family is "like nomads." But the upside of life on the polo tournament circuit is that it never feels like they are just popping into a city for a night. Tournaments tend to be held in the same places, and Figueras, Blaquier, and their four children have had the opportunity to really explore some of the world's most beautiful destinations. "You stay not so long, but long enough to experience the city as a local," says Blaquier.
On December 11, the longtime Ralph Lauren model launched a new fragrance collection (available at Bergdorf Goodman), and the six scents were directly inspired by six cities at the top of Figueras and Blaquier's list of favorites. (Proceeds from the Ignacio Figueras Collection will support the Sentable charity, which was founded by Prince Harry in 2006 to fight HIV and poverty in Lesotho and Botswana, and of which Figueras is an ambassador.)
Below, Figueras and Blaquier reveal what they love to do in Buenos Aires, Palm Beach, Aspen, Windsor, Jaipur, and Dubai to AD.
Architectural Digest: Let’s start with Buenos Aires, your home. What is so special about that city to you?
Nacho Figueras: Buenos Aires is where we're from, where it all began, where I was born, where our kids were born, where we met, so it's a home for us. Is's where our stables—which were featured on the cover of AD—are.
AD: If someone had just one weekend there, what should they do?
NF: Come to my stables! No...Buenos Aires is a very rich cultural city. It looks very European and a lot like Madrid. There's great restaurants and great bars, and there's a great shopping—an antiques market. You can go to Palermo, and there's great shops and restaurants with a lot of local artists that do amazing things and fashion designers, and wood and leather things. I think we have great leather products.
AD: Besides Buenos Aires, which one is your favorite place to go with your kids, as a family? The most relaxed and comfortable city?
NF: They are all special in different ways, but I think Aspen. We go there in the winters and I play snow polo and we all love to ski. We go there in the summer also. Aspen in the summer is also so beautiful and there's so many great things to do, like hiking, biking, riding, playing polo, and rafting.
AD: So was the Aspen scent inspired more by the winter version or the summer version?
NF: In this case we were inspired by snow polo. It's a fresher fragrance, so it was inspired more by the winter.
AD: What about the other scents—how do they reflect their respective cities?
Delfina Blaquier: I was quite involved with the creation of the scents with the team. What we wanted to do is to put in the bottle some of the things we save within our hearts. [For Buenos Aires, for example], what I love about the city is the passion of the people. We go around our lives thinking Argentina is a great country, and we love our food, we love our music. We're very proud of who we are, and that was translated with the intensity of patchouli, the sensual Turkish rose, and there's a little bit of pepper in it! In Windsor, we wanted something green and with white flowers—it's very different to everything that I've smelled before, and it's very special to us. In Jaipur there's the beautiful woody background, and in Dubai there's the oud [a popular sweet, woody scent] because it's super intense.
AD: What made you fall in love with Jaipur and Dubai? What should people do there?
NF: We haven't spent as much time in Jaipur as the others. In Dubai, obviously we go to the Burj Khalifa because it is amazing. We've gone to the 180th floor and it doesn't seem real, but you're 2,600 feet above earth. They have so many incredible things. The water is great. I think that going into the dunes is also great. They really have it all.
AD: Finally, was it hard to pick just six places to feature?
NF: We picked like 10 or 12 at the very beginning, and then we narrowed it down. We also wanted it to be global, that's why it's pretty spread out. We have some more on the works for future announcements if everything goes well. The more fragrances we sell, the more kids we can help. To me that's what really matters. It's not a money project. This is a project that we as a family want to do to help, our very little grain of sand to making the world a better place.
