Perfumes from Nature 

The Floral Family:

• The most popular perfume type, incorporating a wide range: from soft narcissus, to heady jasmine. Some emit the scent of just one flower, from start to end, and these are the soliflores. More commonly, one flower is prominent, but with complementary companion flowers. Alternatively, a whole bouquet can open at once, or gradually unfold. Then there are the fruit/florals or even and gourmand and woody scents often have a floral element: Ballure Allure has a rose and woody mix; Sheean has jasmine and rose in amongst the gourmand desserts.
• Any floral scent will be a perfumer’s interpretation of the flower. But in natural perfumery, we use the actual constituents, found in the flower oils, from which we build the scent. Not all plants produce an oil we can extract, like lily or freesia, so we use a mass spectrometer to tell us what’s in there and then use constituents from other, similarly scented plants, to get an approximation. On top of this, we add our impression of the whole flower.  If a perfume were just a single essential oil, it would be very one dimensional and unlikely to develop when worn. It is down to the perfumer to emphasise a certain aspect and create a mood. Synthetic perfumes are made differently.

Chypre & Fruit/Floral Families:

• This group includes florals with a distinctly fruity element, like Aroma Borealis, with citrus, peach and nectarine swirling around the central flowers. Dhoon Glen has a bold central theme of wild strawberries and fresh woodland plants, whilst TT has a wide gamut of citrus fruits: yuzu, lime, grapefruit and lemon set the scene, whilst glimpses of fennel and basil tease out the sweeter floral notes. Honeysuckle is a soliflore, which closely matches the scent of a freshly picked honeysuckle flower: a warm orange citrus is paired with clean floral elements. Little Fig Tree is much cleaner than typical synthetic fig fragrances. The opening is bright, not sweet and it is only in the heart notes that a vanilla and fruit sweeten the scent.

The Fruity/Gourmands Families: Ballure Allure, Blue Moon, Elderberry, Godred, Sheean

 Why what you smell may not be what I smell

Gender in Perfumes and Perfume Types

Andrea is an experienced, fully qualified, natural perfumer and formulator, working with natural materials, trained in natural and synthetic perfumery. 

Perfumery and Formulating questions are answered by email, on Quora or Instagram.

When Natural means Natural and when it means Man-made.

What goes into perfume can be rather ‘cloaks and daggers’, ‘natural’ can simply mean that the perfumer has decided the end result smell natural! The industry is improving and putting more pressure on manufacturers to be honest about how they work and what they use. If they buy in ready made accords to combine, (like soap or candle-makers) this should be clear along with which materials are used. One area of particular confusion is Nature Identicals…

The perfumery terms: Natural, Niche and Artisan Perfumers tend to refer to similar methods of productions - small, usually independent perfumers who have been trained to work with oils, resins, absolutes, concretes and extract from nature. Their palate often includes “nature identicals”(NI) these are compounds found in flowers and plants and can also be man-made. Most non-perfumers would notice little difference between most, when sniffing them on a scent strip, others are quite markedly different. We use naturally derived NIs as they usually last longer, they can have a better synergistic effect on other materials and may simply smell more like the natural compound. As they are usually double the cost, or more, there needs to be a good reason. We do so if the naturally occurring chemical comes from a plant that in endangered or the extraction is undesirable for the ecosystem or the people working with them. In these situations, we will use laboratory-made nature identicals. (These are not the same as aroma chemicals!)

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Samples

Choose from 20 perfumes, made with hundreds of beautiful natural ingredients. If you can’t decide, our 5 Scent boxes contain one of each in a particular style, so you can try before committing to a full bottle. 

Please click the link for: Perfume Concentration

Animal Testing: We have never worked with suppliers based in countries where testing on animals is legal. We are vehemently against any cruelty to animals and have lobbied for a ban in the past. It is now illegal to test on animals in most countries - in the UK and USA all perfumes are 'cruelty free' - it is not a choice, it is a legal requirement.

However, manufacturing sustainably is still a choice. We have always chosen to do it this way. We leave the lightest footprint we can and examine our practice and process regularly. First and foremost is the quality of our products and how to produce them using sustainable crops.