Defining "Natural" for Fragrance and Cosmetics?
The word Natural is loaded. It’s used a lot by companies to market products because research shows that consumers have a visions of what ‘natural’ means, but it’s not technically meaningful (see the Greenwashing post).
Everything is chemicals. All of the food we eat, the things we drink, the ingredients in our cosmetics and the materials needed to compose a fragrance must. Unless you’re actually consuming a raw material, all of the ingredients are in some way altered to make them function in a useful way.
For Perfumery: Think about the alcohol that the aromatic essences are dissolved in, or the oil they are infused into. The oil and the alcohol are achieved by synthesis: taking the crude, raw material such as cane sugar or moringa seeds and processing them to make them fit for the purpose.
So what is ‘natural’ perfumery?
The term has been codified in terms for cosmetics and fragrance design by the International Fragrance Association: natural aromatic raw materials as being physically obtained from plants using distillation, expression and extraction.
“The Natural Products Association goes one step further to not permit the use of petrochemical solvents in the extraction process, so concretes and absolutes made using hexane are not permitted.” (
IFRA is a body that decides which aroma chemicals are restricted and permitted in fragrance and cosmetics whether of natural or lab created. It is our opinion that they demonstrate a bias towards lab manufactured (evidenced by the growing list of restricted natural ingredients).
My bias is clear. I am just not that into molecules that are designed in a lab. Though I am fascinated by isolated molecules of natural origin.
I have an intrinsic belief that the molecules present in a distilled jasmine flower must be better than the aroma chemical that is a byproduct of the creation of nylon (scientifically a molecule is a molecule is a molecule). It may not be logical. But there we are.
Nature is amazing. I am grateful for modern science. I’m just not that into ‘synthetics’. I prefer ingredients with the least amount of human intervention while still understanding that terms like ‘natural’ are loaded.
(Alchemy has a blog post coming on “Chemaphobia” )
Further Reading
Podcasts to catch:
American Perfumer interview with Charna Ethier
Perfume on the Radio interview with Mandy Aftel
I Am Heretic interview with Mandy Aftel
Photo by Olena Sergienko on Unsplash
