ARGANI Nila Stones. From the Amazigh to your skin

Name: ARGANI Nila Stones
Brand: ARGANI
SKU: nila-stones
Price: 2400 BDT
Availability: InStock

The ingredient

Nila

The blue stone of the hammam.

It gives its colour up slowly.

Water, a few minutes, then blue.

For a visibly brighter, more even complexion.

ARGANI Nila Stones

The ritual

50 g৳ 2,400

ARGANI

Nila Stones

Moroccan indigo, for a visibly brighter, more even complexion.

The ritual

50 g৳ 2,400

The ingredient

Not a mineral. A plant.

Nila is indigo. It comes from the indigo plant, fermented and pressed until it sets hard as a stone. It looks like a mineral and handles like one, which is why it is so often sold as one. It is not. It is a botanical pigment in stone form, and knowing that is the difference between a house that sources and a house that resells.

Ours is a deep blue, with darker blue running through it and a faint natural sparkle where the light catches a broken face. No two pieces match, because a pressed pigment does not come out of a mould.

ARGANI nila stones, rough ultramarine pieces with rust coloured mottling

The forms

Stone, then powder, then paste.

ARGANI offers the stone. The powder and the paste are what it becomes in your hands, shown here so you know what to expect at each stage.

Offered by ARGANI
Stone

As it arrives: rough pieces of deep blue.
Prepared by you
Powder

Grated or rubbed from the stone, a little at a time.
Prepared by you
Paste

Folded into yogurt or water, just before use.

ARGANI offers nila as stones only. It is not sold as a ready powder or paste.

How to use it

Water, a few minutes, then blue.

The classic way to wear nila is on the face, folded into plain, unsweetened yogurt. The yogurt gives the paste body and a cool, soft feel, and lets the blue spread evenly rather than drag. Nila gives its colour up slowly, so the ritual is unhurried: let the water do its work before you reach for anything else.

About a quarter of an hour, start to finish.

A woman resting with a smooth blue mask of nila and yogurt on her face

Wake the stone

Rub the stone in a little warm water, or grind a small amount from it, to free a fine blue. A little goes a long way.

Fold into yogurt

Stir the blue into a spoonful of plain, unsweetened yogurt until the colour is even. Sweetened or flavoured yogurt has no place here.

Loosen with rose water

If the paste is stiff, add ARGANI Rose Water a few drops at a time, until it spreads without running.

Ten to fifteen minutes

Smooth it over clean skin, keeping clear of the eyes and lips, and leave it for ten to fifteen minutes.

Rinse, then oil

Rinse with lukewarm water, press dry, and finish with ARGANI Argan Oil while the skin is still damp.

Once or twice a week is plenty.

For external use only. Keep clear of the eyes, and patch test on the inner arm before the first full use.

Authenticity

How to recognise authentic nila.

A material this prized invites imitation, most often a synthetic dye sold for a fraction of the price of the real thing. Those who know nila rely on a few quiet observations. None is a laboratory test, and none is conclusive alone; read together, they are telling.

In the hand

Authentic nila is irregular in shape and in colour: a deep blue veined with darker tones, with a faint natural glint where a piece has broken.

In water

Indigo is reluctant to dissolve. In still water it gives its colour up slowly and much of it settles, where a synthetic dye clouds the whole glass almost at once.

On the skin

Rinsed away, indigo tends to leave without protest. A dye is more inclined to cling and to stain, most visibly at the hairline and around the nails.

Ours begins as indigo grown in India, and is milled and blended in Souss-Massa.

Provenance

The blue the hammam kept.

Indigo reached Morocco as a dye for cloth and leather, and Amazigh women turned it into something else entirely. In the Sahara it became a bridal ritual: the blue went on days before the wedding so the skin would carry a particular clarity on the day. It never left the hammam.

Ours travels further than most. It begins as indigo grown in India, is milled and blended in Souss-Massa, on Morocco's Atlantic coast, and reaches ARGANI through our supplier in Marrakech-Safi.

The ARGANI standard

The blue of the hammam.

Indigo grown in India, milled and blended in Souss-Massa, and kept by Moroccan women for generations. Loosened with yogurt or water and laid on the skin, it leaves the complexion visibly brighter and more even. A radiance ritual as old as the hammam itself.

The khatem

Press and hold.

The eight-pointed star of Moroccan zellige is the mark on every ARGANI piece. Hold it closed, and it gives up where this one began.

Sealed by ARGANI

Nila Stones

Indigo grown inIndia
Milled and blendedSouss-Massa
Sealed inARGANI, Dhaka

From the Amazigh to your skin

Order this piece

In their words

What the house hears back

No review is published yet for this piece. If you have used it, yours would be the first.

A jar of ARGANI Black Soap on wet marble in the steam of the hammam

The pairing

Black Soap first.

This is the pairing the hammam already made. Beldi black soap softens and lifts, nila goes on after, and the two are usually mixed in the palm. One prepares the skin, the other finishes it.

ARGANI Moroccan Black Soap

Kept at its finest

Dry, closed, and away from small hands.

Nila is a pigment, so it will colour a wet towel, a basin and pale grout. Kept dry between uses, a stone will last for years.

For external use only. Patch test on the inner arm before the first full use. Avoid the eye area. Keep out of reach of children. Not to be swallowed.

Each stone weighs: Roughly 10 to 20 g a stone
At its finest for: 3 years, kept dry
Composition: Indigofera tinctoria leaf powder
Indigo grown in: India
Milled and blended: Souss-Massa

Make it yours