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The perfumers and bath and body creators who use synthetics (i.e. fragrance oils) presumably have good reasons for using them. Usually, the reason is purefly financial: synthetics are produced cheap and let’s face it, most big-name perfumers are trapped in the corporate spiral so cheap the materials must be. Sometimes, it’s for a legitimately ethical reason: using the synthetic options may prevent the actual plant from going extinct through overuse.
Sometimes the scent can’t be found in nature to begin with.
I get it, I do. I just won’t do it - I like my naturals, well, natural. What’s alternately amusing/irritating me is this “praise synthetics/slam naturalism” bent I’m seeing more and more of out of the big-names in the perfume industry. The reason it’s tweaking me is that I can smell their fear, and it’s pure, superstitious, baloney fear, the kind that led to people getting stuffed in Iron Maidens during the Inquisition. These superstitious are frothing forth from men who claim “scientist” in their job title. Apparently “unscientific” is the new “heretic” among perfumers. Should I fear someone from Quest Chemicals is going to show up at my door and haul me off for perverting people with natural materials? Will my oils be cataloged and hidden in some basement with secret passageways that lead to the Vatican? Geez, I thought I had enough to fear living under a regime run by George Bush. It’s a sad day - I openly practice witchcraft, and I’m less fearful and superstitious than these science types.
I’ve been staying away from the synthetics debate because I haven’t researched synthetics that thoroughly, and I just don’t know the materials as initimately as I do natural materials. But this completely unsubtle movement against naturals has my hackles up: there’s something going on behind the scenes, and the syntheticists are scared, so scared that they’re bullying and slamming every naturalist they can. Perfume and Flavorist has started a series called In Praise of Synthetics. In an interview on National Public Radio on January 21st, Chandler Burr felt it necessary to close his interview with an unasked-about and ompletely unnecessary slam against the naturals movement. It’s not the first time he’s made that slam, either, even though from what I gather, no one was asking then, either. IFRA has been doing its darnedest to make synthetics our only chemical option in perfume creation, going so far as to issue unresearched data indicating natural materials are far more allergenic than they actually are (and conveniently ignoring the nature of allergy and the way that allergy works.)What makes much of this naturalists-stalking so ridiculous and Inquisition-like is that even among artisan perfumers, those of us actively in business as natural perfumers are something of a rarity - so much so that we don’t really have accurate numbers for how many of us there are. To get down to the numbers you would have to sort out people who make perfume only as a hobby (I would guess that’s most of us) from smartasses with an eyedropper and a few oils (next level) from those of us actively in business. Among those of us who are actively in business, you would have to separate the essential oil suppliers from the specialists.
I would place myself under that last group of specialists and I suspect my circumstances are still nontypical. Most home bath and body makers in the US are in soap, because soap is where the money is at here. Those of us still specializing in perfume are micro-businesses; our market share is people who are either perfume collectors who purchase equally from artisan naturalists and big name companies, or who have a deep-seated animosity towards syntheticists and their ilk that no amount of praising synthetics is going to unseat.
So far, I’ve left synthetics alone, just because I prefer not to use them. But the way the big chemical makers are carrying on is smelling like a superstition-driven witch hunt. So excuse me, I’m going to go hug my all-natural perfume organ now.
Bear with me over the next two entries, kind readers. I’ve had a long strange night in the motel I’m at, and while the details are not relevant to this blog, they alas affect the writing because between the sleep deficit (I got two hours of sleep last night) and the turkey’s triptophane, I’m running on the edge of a hypnogogic state. Given my preference for a rational and focused writing style, I apologize to all readers and to my future more conscious self if this should veer into the territory of melting clocks.
Between the traditionally obligated overindulgence today, I read what I could of Luca Turin’s book the Secret of Scent.While certainly a charming writer (assuming it is not, as rumored, ghost written), there are bits here and there in the information that my medieval mind can parse that are outdated/inaccurate, particularly regarding Aveda’s perfumery: I’m not sure when it happened, but I can tell from looking at any Juut store selection that natural/organic material perfume design has gone by the wayside in favor of profit and convenience (not necessarily bad business decisions, but questionable in face of Aveda’s aggressive green marketing).
Much of the book is sadly over my head. It is a somewhat wandering treatise on Turin’s theories about the mechanics of smell and the chemistry behind it. Try though I might, even without my current sleep deficit, I think I would struggle to feign interest in endless diagrams of molecules. Still, with each passage is something that does strike my interest, whether it’s the way in which Turin defines smells, or his insider comments about the perfume industry.
At a time when I am more awake, there is much more food for thought hidden between these pages, particularly for me, as a self-taught perfumer whose chemistry teacher, in an attempt to put it kindly to my parents, assured them that chem lab was just “not my cup of tea,” and then later wondered at how my lab partner and I always succeeded in our experiments despite our basic inability to follow directions. Turin himself says restricting perfumery to the chemists cuts out the artists that perfumery needs to progress creatively - but we don’t exactly see eye to eye about the use of synthetics in perfumery.
Turin’s impact on perfumery has led directly to perfumery becoming an olfactory art movement. It’s important to read the science behind it, even if it’s only - very laterally - science to Turin himself.
ReferencesI’m seeing less of it these days, but I’m still seeing it: “We give you these perfume oils pure! Undiluted!” Countless Ebay sellers have used this exact phrasing, enticing consumers over to their particular brand of commercial fragrance imitations. These claims of undiluted oils are either false, or for reasons to be discussed, meaningless, so move on to another
seller when listings are earmarked by such hawking.
Dilution is the process by which something is made less concentrated; because this is often described as “weakened” consumers immediately assume that if a substance is diluted, it isn’t as good. This is especially true of North American consumers. The fact of the matter is not only do you not want most of
these fun-smelling goodies at full strength on your skin, having them at full strength with the wrong chemical
could seriously hurt you. Even essential oils that have no history of damage upon skin contact are less than ideal when
undiluted - just ask anyone who has to sit next to you in a car. Given the rampant allergies and asthmas people have these
days, getting into any closed space with heavy perfume on is downright mean. The French take on fine perfume is a good one: a little bit, applied lightly, goes a very, very long way.
The most common dilution-error scent is probably cinnamon. Many, many people enjoy bath and body products with this fragrancing in it, especially during the holidays. It’s warm, and lively, and stimulates lots of memories of past holidays and happiness. Properly diluted, it still gives off a potent and warming scent. But one drop of undiluted oil on your skin and you
will be in pain.1 This needs to be diluted. Even essential oils that do not cause immediate pain need dilution to be worn safely - without it, a host of issues may occur including sensitivity to light, an increased tendency towards allergic reaction, and on the socially responsible side, smelling of something so strongly that you create an aversion to the scent in those around you.
Dilution is, also, a way of making things less affordable more affordable. Here’s where the direct fibbing comes in - sometimes a fragrance oil has the same name as an essential oil. For instance, a woman I know loves the scent of neroli. She swore up and down to me that she bought an ounce of neroli, undiluted, for around $15. Even a low quality neroli is around $115/ounce at the time I write this; if it had been true, undiluted neroli, there’s no way she would have been spreading it around her at the time pregnant belly - the cost would have been far too dear.
So when you see these “undiluted!” ads, be wary. If the owner is not directly fibbing about adding a reasonable proporition of base oil or alcohol to a fragrance mix, then what is more probable is that the “pure” oil is “pure” fragrance oil. In that case, being sold a fragrance “undiluted” means that the seller is really giving you a decant at a slight profit.2
So here’s the truth, undiluted: dilutions are good for you. If you want natural perfume, you want it diluted!
ReferencesI recently got an inquiry from a client about my Coffee Wonderful fragrance. “I can smell the cinnamon,” she wrote me, “but I can’t smell the coffee!”
Considering that an actual coffee bean infusion is the largest component of the fragrance, I quickly sampled a batch myself and got a second opinion from my very patient boyfriend. In the first five minutes, yup, all he smelled was cinnamon. I could smell the coffee - I’d put it there, so I knew what I was looking for. But I realized that someone who does not spend a good portion of every day just sniffing things might not realize right away what was happening. After an hour, the coffee and vanilla emerged where the citrus had left off, but again, it was coming off as a single note rather than the multiple easy-to-isolate notes that my client might have expected.
Basically, the coffee and cinnamon were similar enough in texture that the molecules must have bonded to each other. You can test this theory for yourself: get a nice, dark cup of coffee. Also, get yourself a generous spoonful of cinnamon. Take a few moments to take turns sniffing the coffee and sniffing the cinnamon - repeat sniffing each individually (fortunately, coffee’s a palate cleanser so you can do this for awhile without wearing out your nose). Drop a generous pinch of the cinnamon into the coffee. Sniff. Make note of how it changes. If you leave it for a few minutes, the scent changes even more as the coffee and cinnamon interacts. Yes, the cinnamon will still be distinctive, but it’s cinnamon in coffee - not just cinnamon by itself. The cinnamon is a drama queen and will take center stage no matter how small a portion of the performance you give it, but its performance is still richly nuanced by its chemistry with coffee. And while coffee certainly shines alone, the minutes you make it share stage space with any other scent, it assigns itself to a supporting role. Even adding cream and sugar significantly changes the scent, let alone adding a spice with the scene-stealing gusto of cinnamon.
So thus is my lesson about coffee, and how it may behave with other scents. After all, you can’t expect a mocha to smell like dark roast.
