What is the biggest difference between natural and conventional perfumes (ingredients, preservatives, storage life, fixatives, stability, scent-development on the skin, etc…)?
A natural perfume compound comes from nature (plants in our case), a synthetic fragrance molecule is synthesized from (non-renewable) petrochemicals (i.e. crude oil).
At Abel, also don’t use any synthetic fixatives, chemical UV filters or preservatives. To me, comparing natural fragrance and synthetic fragrance is like comparing fresh orange juice and a flavoured drink.
Natural ingredients are alive, dynamic, and the most rare beautiful ingredients in a perfumer’s palette!
Why is it important to use clean & natural ingredients also in perfumes and fragrances (e.g. the impact on your skin & body, animal testing, environmental reasons…)?
Although natural perfume is only really just starting to emerge as a category, “fragrance-free” has been a category for a very long time.
It’s not surprising, given that synthetic fragrance compounds are some of the worst offenders when it comes to environmental impact (not degrading in the food chain, especially in aquatic ecosystems) and toxicity in the human body. We have so many customers that find Abel after a very long period of not wearing perfume, and they are so excited to find a sophisticated natural option.
The reasons they stopped wearing fragrance are diverse – headaches, asthma, skin allergies, or just being generally offended by the overwhelming smell of synthetic fragrances. I do warn you though, once you stop wearing synthetic fragrance, it can be very hard to go back!
Side note: concerning product labels, “animal testing” and “vegan” are generally totally separate from “natural” and “synthetic” – i.e. Coca-Cola is vegan, but that doesn’t make it natural!
What are the most commonly used dirty ingredients in perfumes? And what is their impact on humans & the environment? And how can you handle the omission of those solids in a natural fragrance? Is there a substitute, or do you have to adjust the whole composition of the fragrance?
As our Master Perfumer Isaac Sinclair likes to say, “Making perfume without musk is like cooking without butter.”
Obviously you can do it, and you don’t normally add butter to a dish to make it buttery – you add it to enhance the flavours of all the other ingredients. Musk is the same; its own scent is actually very light and effervescent (around 1/3 of people can’t smell musk!), but it has the ability to elevate the entire fragrance and works as a fixative… which means that synthetic musk is used in over 99% of fragrances but, as you say, is also the fragrance compound that is most talked about in terms of toxicity.
We have gotten around this by using a musk compound derived from plants. It features the same single molecule – ambrettolide – as the synthetic compound so widely used. But it comes from a natural source (the hibiscus flower) rather than from crude oil.
Can you say something about sustainable sourcing? What are the advantages and challenges (pesticides, water, no genetic engineering, etc.)? What about the farmers & employees? What is the difference compared to conventional sourcing? Can you also smell the difference between an organic or sustainably grown plant and one that was conventionally cultivated?
In wine, we talk about “terroir” – the impact the land, environment and the hands that grow the grapes have on the resulting wine. It’s the same with fragrance compounds. We really look at where and how the plants are grown and how this has a major impact on the scent profile. The hero ingredient in White Vetiver is vetiver, and we source ours from Haiti.
Haitian vetiver is fresh and creamy – as compared to Javanese vetiver, which is smokier and darker. We like to get as close to the farms as possible and luckily have a supplier committed to sustainable, community-driven sourcing. We give back 1% of our white vetiver sales to a foundation there called SOIL Haiti, which has dual-purpose remit – to put in sanitation units while using human waste as compost for the soil.
What are the disadvantages of pure natural perfumes (e.g. not such a great olfactory scent variety, shelf-life, texture, reaction with sunlight…)?I often heard that natural scents are highly allergenic or even more allergenic than synthetic ones? Is that true?
I’ll go back to food: have you ever heard of anyone being allergic to coca-cola? … But you have heard of someone allergic to tomato juice, right? That’s because natural ingredients are complex, and an essential oil is made up of many individual scent molecules. Just like with food (or hay fever!), humans have allergies. This is talked about a lot and as such, it’s been something I’ve been wary of – and always cautioned customers who know they have sensitive skin to allergy test on a small patch of skin.But I have to say, in making and selling natural perfume for over 6 years now, I’ve never had a single customer contact us with an allergy!
Indeed, there are less options in a perfumer’s palette when working with exclusively naturals (i.e. 300 vs. 3000!), but we like to think limitation breeds creativity! Also the ingredients themselves are so beautifully complex – natural ingredients are indeed the most alluring ingredients in a perfumer’s palette.
Is it possible to synthetically create every single scent that is found in nature, or are there any limits?
I honestly don’t know!! Personally, I don’t think the synthetic molecules are able to capture the beauty of the natural scent in the same way (as they are just a single molecule, whereas a natural smell is so much more complex than that!). But I do know that new molecules are being discovered all the time…
What is the biggest challenge in creating & producing a natural fragrance – for example, why do natural scents not last that long? And what are the characteristics of a good clean & sustainable fragrance?
I find “clean” such a difficult term to define. I’m not an expert on this – we stick to “100% natural” because it’s clear & simple, but also because I prefer the scent profile of purely natural ingredients.
When it comes to clean & sustainable, I think the most important thing you should be looking for is a transparent brand or company!
Anyone can call their perfume clean or sustainable… so unless they’ve got something to back that up and are willing to share their ingredient lists and manufacturing processes with you, I’d be dubious.
And why do natural scents not last that long? I compare it to a loaf of bread. You buy a fresh loaf from an artisanal baker. The day you take it home, it’s outrageously good and nothing can beat it – but that doesn’t last. You buy a loaf of bread from the supermarket and it will taste the same on Day 6 as it did on Day 1. So, I’ll re-frame the question: Why do synthetic fragrances last so long…?
Natural raw materials vary with the season. Can you detect & remark that also in the scent? Can every batch of a natural perfume smell a little bit different?
Yes, definitely. We re-formulate every time we do a new production to check that the fragrance profile hasn’t changed too much… It’s more time intensive, but it’s also one of the beautiful peculiarities of working with natural scents.
Natural perfume (like a fine wine) will also evolve in the bottle. Many of our fragrances I like with 12-24 months in the bottle! They become softer / rounder.
Essential oils have a strong impact on human senses (like aroma therapy, e.g. the soothing effect of lavender). Does that play a role in your products? Does every fragrance have a different effect on the person who’s wearing it? Do synthetic fragrances have the same effects?
We like to be taken seriously as a fine fragrance house, so we don’t talk a lot about the medicinal qualities of essential oils. However, we love this secondary benefit.
In Nurture (our collaboration fragrance with Gray Label specifically for new and expecting mothers), we did let this aspect take a bit more of the centre stage. Working with ingredients that are not just “not-bad” for you while you’re pregnant, but actually good for you.
I’ve never seen any research on whether or not synthetic fragrance molecules have therapeutic values, but I would think no – both intuitively and from a simple scientific perspective.
Essential oils are made up of a whole host of molecules, only some of which are fragrance molecules – so if anything, it would be the combination of those molecules in one compound that would give it any “medicinal-like” qualities.
What is most important when it comes to sustainable packaging (the color / dye, recycling, refillable glass bottles, etc.)?
For Abel, we like to look at the whole picture… and packaging is one (important) part of this. For a product like perfume, where many consumers buy for the packaging – and more money, time and resource tends to go into the making the packaging than into the production of the fragrance itself (not ours!!) – I think it’s a super important area to address.
What about rare & endangered raw materials? Are they specially farmed, or is it better to leave them out? What do you think about synthetic substitutes in this case?
This is a difficult one and like most things, it’s not so black and white. We use sandalwood from East India, which historically has been endangered due to overfarming and black market selling.
We use it because we believe in re-building sustainable farming practices in a community built around this ingredient. So we only source from certified sustainable plantations, and our suppliers are doing work within the community.
There is much evidence that we can reverse the effects of climate change by planting trees and growing plants… therefore, any industry that can bring a sustainable profit back into the community by growing plants and trees is having a positive impact. We don’t consider synthetic substitutes more sustainable – they are made from a nonrenewable resource (petro-chemicals) and there is very little research to prove how they impact the environment through their full life cycle (almost none of them biodegrade, and they therefore build up in our ecosystems)… but like I say, it’s not black and white – and anyone who says so is being very misleading!!
What is the difference between a perfume oil & a perfume spray?
Perfume oil is generally perfume oils + an oil base carrier. Perfume spray is normally perfume oils + a base that will break down the ingredients so that they can be sprayed (as the fragrance oils can be very thick). In our case, we use a food grade (not denatured) organically certified alcohol produced from grains. Our formulas are not water-based because for oil to break down in water, it would require the addition of a very heavy duty (read: toxic) emulsifier.
Tags: Behind the Brand, Eye on Ingredients, Fragrance
J. R. Thesis Smith is a mixed-race millenial in the dawn of their 30s & a wordsmith of sorts. They've spent most of their waking life in the U.S. – in the urban sprawl of NYC that is New Jersey, in the depths of its suburban echoes – but always dreamed of making their way across a bigger pond, to a place where opportunity would knock a little more often. After completing their training at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts (effectively spending three poor years in NYC) as a dance major, they gifted themselves a semester of studying abroad in Berlin, and in doing so kept a vow made in early adolescence – thereby inciting a metamorphosis of promise into full-bodied intention: to eventually fully emigrate to Berlin, the first space that had ever allowed them the freedom to find their own breath, their pace of existence. Now that they finally live there, they're learning how to breathe again – striving to become a more active member of the Undercommons as they continue on the odyssey that is their self-realization as an artistic being. Their most resonant hope is that they will be able to say what is true & necessary & kind; that people will find the time to listen, to themselves and each other; and that their voice will inspire other voices to speak out in turn.
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