Natural materials can be pricey and tough to find – and when it comes to ‘gorgeous’-smelling ingredients like whale feces,no two samples smell the same. But smaller perfumers are rising to the challengeQuick question: how many times, as you sampled perfume, and has a salesperson told you that something is “all natural”? A lot,correct? At least, more often than they should. The idea of a natural” perfume is compelling: it sounds healthy and upscale, or like biological food. And yet,nearly every time you hear the phrase “all-natural, a synthetic product is being used. “Mainstream perfumes are composed of mostly synthetics at this point; well over 90%, and ” independent perfumer Dawn Spencer Hurwitz tells me. For perfume to be inexpensive and widely available,it pretty much has to use them. This isn’t necessarily wrong: Spencer Hurwitz herself creates some all-natural perfumes and some not-so-natural ones. And “synthetic” doesn’t always mean “bad”. Chanel No 5 contains some genuine jasmine oil, but its smell mostly comes from the artificial aromachemicals known as aldehydes. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com