I am asked almost weekly to create a reproduction of a fragrance. I hate this – hate hate hate it – with a burning passion. Asking me to do imitations denies me of a creative outlet, and frustrates me because it tells me that some perfume fans aren’t willing to adapt and change as perfumes change. This is why 90% of department store perfumes smell almost exactly the same. People get stuck on one perfume, get trapped in one aesthetic, and suddenly perfectly lovely notes like violet, rose and musk become the grandma du jour. Chanel No. 5 is awful just due to overuse.1 There are even sellers on Etsy and Ebay who make their living off the imitations market, buying fragrance oil pre-mixes and just dumping them in a base. You can only do it by hand, so technically, it’s handmade, and while I’m loathe to point people to those sellers I’ve been sorely tempted to do so more than once.
So while I’m gratified by Harper’s “fakes stink” ad as perhaps it’s persuaded a few people not to contact me with custom requests I’ll do everything I can to get out of, I feel obligated in the name of integrity to point out that imitating perfumes is not actually illegal. The reason perfumers aren’t required by the FDA to disclose their ingredients2 is because no recipe may be copyrighted. You can trademark names – up to a point – but the actual fragrance? Nope. Can’t do it.
As to the claims in the ad about ingredients… I’d like to know how they got their information. Chemical companies that make fragrance oils aren’t required to disclose how they make them. It’s possible urine or other stuff is in them. It’s possible, and more likely, that’s just good old petroleum. Although aldehydes were originally distilled from urine. The fact is, we don’t know what’s in them. Despite an incident where I was accused of claiming that synthetic materials were composed of urine, I don’t know this and I never said I did know this for a fact – but research into the history of aldehydes raises its presence as a real possibility. Harper’s doesn’t know this for a fact either. Only the European, Chinese and US plants that make these fragrance oils know what’s in them. Whether or not it’s an imitation or the Real Perfume, chances are they’re using the same or similar chemicals – so if there’s urine or other grossness in the fake, there’s the same grossness in the real thing, too.
Knock-offs are part and parcel of the fashion industry, and expecting everyone to buy couture is just ridiculous. Especially since couture is ridiculous.
And I will say that I don’t ever like being asked to do a reproduction – but I will do them if and only if the perfume can no longer be found anywhere on the market, and I can be provided a sample. But I’ll still grumble about it. I’ll keep an eye out for perfumers that do imitations; having a quality referral list would probably do us all a favor.
References- I appreciate synthetics, but I won’t use them unless I got them by accident. And I label those with “I dunno what’s really in it either.” Besides, I have an alarming tendency to break out in hives when I use anything with synthetics in it too often, or even am forced to smell too many of such things. [↩]
- I have chosen to act counter to the industry and practice full ingredient disclosure as at my business’s size and tendency to gross $400 a year if I’m lucky, there’s no real incentive to imitate me [↩]
