Natural Radiance—From Simple to Sophisticated

By Einav Keet

Mandy Aftel, founder and crafter of the Berkeley, California-based line of natural fragrances Aftelier Perfumes, has no love for her glitzy, department store competitors. It’s not that those other perfumes—often made with lab-produced fragrance oils and chemical solvents—smell bad. “Synthetic oils have nothing to do with the world of nature and plants,” she explains. “They don’t have the holistic properties and don’t smell anywhere near as good.” While scent preferences vary considerably, Aftel speaks for a growing world of perfumers who—with some dedicated consumers in tow—avoid artificial ingredients and instead use pure essential oils in an attempt to revive the somewhat lost art of natural perfumery.

In the self-regulated world of the fragrance industry, where perfumers carefully guard their formulas and rarely disclose ingredient lists, a spritz of your favorite perfume may deliver a very unnatural dose of chemicals. “About 100 years ago, most perfumes were made entirely of natural ingredients,” says Denys Charles, PhD, a chemist who studies the chemical makeup of essential oils. “However, the modern perfume industry uses mostly synthetic chemicals. Today, of the more than 3,000 fragrance ingredients available to the perfumers, fewer than 5 percent come directly from natural sources.”
That tiny bottle of your signature scent can hide a host of synthetic compounds undetectable to the human nose and unlisted on the label. These chemicals, often used to make perfumes last longer on the body, include aldehydes, benzene derivatives, phthalates, and many other known toxins. While our desire to smell delicious is understandable—research has, in fact, shown a relationship between our ability to smell and our sex drive—exposing ourselves to ingredients that may cause cancer, birth defects, allergic reactions, respiratory problems, and nervous system damage hardly seems worthwhile.

In a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control in 2000, scientists detected measurable amounts of diethyl phthalate as well as other phthalates in 289 adults after studies had showed that these compounds caused cancer and reproductive system damage in lab animals. Although the FDA later said that phthalate levels used in cosmetics and perfumes were within safety limits, the European Union issued a ban on the use of one phthalate in cosmetic products.

Aftel, author of Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume (Gibbs Smith, 2004)and founder of the Artisan Natural Perfumers Guild, says that the use of synthetic oils and chemicals has become the standard in the perfume industry, but hopes that she and others can reverse that trend. “Most companies say that their products are made with natural ingredients and they’re not,” she says. Instead, perfumeries now rely on less expensive petrochemical-based fragrance oils cooked up in a lab to mimic pure essential oils. To help protect trade secrets, the FDA allows perfume manufacturers to label their products with catchall terms such as fragrance, perfume, and parfum.

“Only a very highly trained nose will be able to smell the difference between a pure natural essential oil and a perfume created by mixing synthetic chemicals,” says Charles. “These chemicals and solvents are combined in such a way that the brain is tricked into believing that it smells something natural and very pleasant.”

So how can we separate the attar from the aldehydes?
Since companies don’t like to divulge their formulas, trying to find out exactly what’s in your signature scent can be a fool’s errand. Luckily, the blossoming market of natural perfumes offers a seductive-smelling array of healthy substitutes. Look for perfumeries that use only 100 percent pure essential plant oils in bases such as organic alcohol or oil. Aftel points out that natural perfumery can involve compromises—for instance, sacrificing synthetics often results in the loss of long-lasting fragrance.

But for people like Natalie Szapowalo, who co-founded Tsi-La Organics perfumes more than seven years ago in response to her own suspicions about cosmetic and fragrance ingredients, the trade-offs are more than acceptable. “We wanted to create something that didn’t lie to people; we wanted to tell them exactly what was in the product, and that what they were using was going to be good,” says Szapowalo, adding that 60 essential oils can go into one fragrance blend. Because smell permeates both our inner as well our outer lives, a perfume whose ingredients are as wholesome as its scent is well worth sniffing out.

You can learn more about the makeup and safety of specific perfumes through the Environmental Working Group’s rating guide of perfumes and colognes. Just go to www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep/ to find ingredient reviews of more than 200 fragrances and see how yours stacks up.

A spritz of your favorite perfume may deliver a very unnatural dose of chemicals.

Of the more than 3,000 fragrance ingredients available to the perfumers, fewer than 5 percent come directly from natural sources.

The blossoming market of natural perfumes offers a seductive-smelling array of healthy substitutes.