ECLIP

Today I am writing about a fantastic innovation a couple of my collegues have come up with!
One of the hardest battles us natural perfumers face, is that of information.
You see the general public has little way of understanding the diference between what we do, and what the larger conventional perfume companies do.
I mean, my neighbour tried to tell me the other day that Chanel No5 was made out of natural Ylang Ylang Flowers!
Unluckily labeling legislation does little to help here..
Basically, you can put anything in a perfume, and the label itself will say helpful things like :"contains: alc. denat., water, perfume."
The big companies are also beginning to jump on the natural bandwagon and are selling a wide range of cosmetics and now even perfumes with lovely natural imaes and hints in their advertising that make people think they ARE actually natural.


So it's time to fight back.
And here's where ECLIP comes in:
ECLIP stands for Complete Ethical List of Ingerdients in Perfume.
Sounds pretty clear doesn't it?!
The idea behind it is to simply start openly and clearly showing exactly what is in out perfumes useing a standardized format. The format we are useing is the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) standard for cosmetic ingredients, that can be found on the ISO website
That way, consumers can make a clear and informed decision about what they are buying!
Revolution through honesty, hows that for a cool idea?!

And it may well work.
The more of us who do this, the more pressure will mount for the bigger companies to do this too.

I have posted the ECLIP list for my company below, and here is also a webpage which is the start of our true revolution:

Natural Perfumers who use ECLIP

 

ECLIP of "Perfume by Nature"

ETHYCAL COMPLETE LIST OF INGREDIENTS IN PERFUMES  

WHAT I USE IN MY PERFUMES

Absolute as defined by ISO 9235
Alcohol natural
Animal Extracts and tinctures: (Hyraceum, Honey, Beeswax).
Concrete: as defined by by ISO 9235
Essential oils: as defined by ISO. 9235
Extracts: as defined by ISO 9235
Natural molecules isolates obtained from essential oils
Oil Vegetable
Resinoids: as defined by ISO 9235
Tinctures: as defined by ISO 9235



Wax  from bees (for solid perfumes)


WHAT I DO NOT USE IN MY PERFUMES

Alcohol synthetic
Aroma chemicals from chemical synthesis of petroleum derivatives.
Aroma chemicals from chemical synthesis of natural raw materials  
Denaturant for alcohol
Natural molecules (Isolates) from bio technology
Ogm ingredients
Oil MIneral (paraffins)
Preservatives (natural) ex. wheat germ oil
Preservatives (synthetic) ex. vitamin C
Wax from petroleum (for solid perfumes)  

Definition of the products listed on ECLIP      

Absolute: extracted with ethanol from concrete or resinoides. Ethanol is then removed.

Alcohol natural: obtained from natural raw material source (grain, corn, cane) by fermentation then distillation.

Alcohol synthetic, synthetic ethanol is obtained by mixing ethylene (gas obtained from petroleum or fossil gases) with steam at a temperature of 300° Celsius.
Animal Extracts and tinctures: obtained by treating animal raw material with ethanol. To obtain the Extract the solvent is removed (es. civet, Castoreum, Hyraceum, Ambergris, Honey bee).
Aroma chemicals from chemical synthesis of petroleum derivatives.
Aroma chemicals from natural raw materials (acetate vetyveryle, acetate cedryle ecc…): Single molecules obtained from chemical reaction of natural raw materials with acids to obtain acetates, cinnamates, brassylates etc.
Antioxidants (natural) es. wheat germ oil
Antioxidants (synthetic) es. vitamin C or E
Concrete: obtained from botanical raw material usually extracted with solvent (hexane, supercritical CO2) then the solvent is removed.
Denaturant : in perfumery the combination of 2 chemical products is used to disable human consumption. The chemicals used for denaturation are MEK (methyl ethyl ketone), of controversial health impact and Bitrex.
Essential oils: obtained by steam distillation of natural raw material or cold press in the case of citruses.
Essential oils which significantly change in composition (folded essential oils, fractioned essential oils , x-less essential oil, molecular distillation). materials which has been eliminated reduced by re-distillation
Extracts: obtained by treating natural raw material with volative solvent which is then removed or non volatile solvent that is not removed at the end.
Natural molecules (So called) or Isolates, from bio technology (patent secrecy on process and origin material) obtained from microbiological synthesis. the problem is related to the secrecy that the producers keeps on the origin material of these products with the excuse of patent propriety and confidentiality.
Natural molecules (isolates) obtained from essential oils by distillation. Mostly obtained from fractional distillation of natural essential essential oils.
Ogm ingredients any ingredient from genetically modificated raw material
Oil mineral (paraffins) derived from petroleum. obtained from crude distillation of the same.
Oils vegetable (jojoba, mandorle ecc) from natural source obtained from cold pression without solvents
Preservatives (natural) ex. wheat germ oil, used to prevent the deterioration by oxidation
Preservatives (synthetic) ex. vitamin C, used to prevent the deterioration by oxidation
PG and DPG (Propylen Glicole, Dipropylen Glicole) synthetic solvent from petroleum used to obtain extracts from natural raw materials: PG is used mainly to obtain cocoa extract: the PG is NOT removed.
Resinoids: obtained from dry botanical raw material extracted usually with ethanol, that is then removed.
Tinctures: obtained from ethanol maceration of raw material (also called infusion in perfumery); the exhausted raw material is filtered off.
Water
Wax  from bees (for solid perfumes)
Wax from petroleum (for solid perfumes)
In all our fragrances are present the 16 so called “natural allergens” contained in most essential oils, they are:

• cynnamic alcohol
• hexil cinnamal
• citral
• eugenol
• geraniol
• hydroxycitronellal
• isoeugenol
• anisic alcohol
• benzilbenzoate
• benzyl cinnamate
• citronellol
• d- limonene
• cynnamaldehyde
• farnesol
• linalool
• evernia prunastri extract

Naturalperfumers that use ECLIP


The list of "natural allergens" is a biot more controversial.
It's one that was basically set up by IFRA, the international perfume association. And defines ingredients that they have decided can cause allergies in some people, and sets standards for the amount in which these can be used in perfumes, as well as demanding that these be declared on labels.
Perfonally I think it's a load of rubbish, as it doesnt incude the many many artificial perfume ingredients that can cause nasty reactions in so many people...and also doesn't take into account that essential oils are complex synergies that contain these chemicals in small amounts...which is a totally different thing to the way the perfume industry uses them.


However, IFRA is such a powerful mover and shaker in the business world that many individual countries have started to legislate useing their standards.
And to be able to sell perfumes legally in most European Countries, we now have to include that list, to warn people that our perfumes contain these dangerous natural chemicals as part of the essential oils we use!

But thats another story alltogether..
Anyway, here's to a new revolution in honesty in business!

I'll be including this list on a whole page of it's own on my website, as soon as I can find a new webtechie to fix up my official website!

 

Natural Isolates chapter one

"Playing with the Dark Side"

Well, I finally got hold of a collection of natural isolates to play with...
(For those of you not in the "know" , natural isolates are the current buzz word amongst botanical /natural perfumes. They are chemicals that have been "isolated" from natural sources, usually useing fractional distilation. Because of their natural origins, these fragrance chemicals are being added to the pallette of many natural perfumes, but some feel that since they are actually isolated chemicals, rather than complex scented simple extractions such as essential oils and tinctures made directly from the plants, that they are no longer "natural" as such. For me they fall into a grey area that I haven't made up my mind about yet, hence my following musings.)
For days, I circled around them, unscrewing the lids and sniffing them suspiciously...
They make me nervous...
Essential oils I understand deeply. I know the herbs and the fruits they come from, their effect on the human body, how much I can use safely, what they do...they are my freinds and my playmates, beloved for so many years that they have become as familiar to me as the food I eat.
But these babies in their sterile little bottles, with strange chemical names i forget as soon as I have read them, are completely unknown. Wierd strangers in my happy friendly workshop full of dried herbs and tree resins.
How do I use them? What will they do to me if I spill them all over the workbench and the workshop fills with their fumes?
I go searching on the Internet, and all I can find is guidelines for the safe dilution percentages in an actual skin contact blend. Nothing more. And it reminds why I've shied away from artificial perfume ingredients for so many years...(beyond my disdain and repulsion by the actual smell of so many of them of course).

This little group of isolates form a pallette of singular scents.
Nothing as unpleasant as some of the artificial blends I have encountered, but they are very different to the essential oils and absolutes I am used to. they seem almost one dimensional, and totally missing the complexity of my usual ingredients.

Some of them are very familiar....the lollies of my childhood were obviously flavoured by "citral" and "ethyl decadionate"...and the bright purple grape flavoured bubble gum we used to beg off American Gi's from the army base next to our school was obviously given it's flourescant ultra grape flavour with the help of "methyl anthranilate".
Others are completely alien and slightly repulsive to my nose, such as "phenyl ethyl alcohol" which to me just smells like plastic, and "bucco leaf" which isn't a leaf, and is one of the notes I have smelt in many noxious plants that to me just sends warning bells of "don't touch!" and "hazardous for consumption" all over the place....

Some again are obvious in their origin. "Eugenol" is the baby cousin of All spice and Cloves and probably an unobtrusive replacemnt for them if you want a weaker, less obvious spice note...and "methyl cinnamate" is actually a weak cinnamon smelling thing.
But I still don't see the reason not to use the real spices in the first place.
If I want to create a perfume that calls up the poison rings of the Italian Gibraldi family, I might find a use for the bitter almond touch of "benzaldehyde".But so far, only 3 of these new toys really tempt me to any kind of olfactory experimentation:
And of course, they are fruit notes. The only family of accords I have found missing in my extensive natural pallette have been fruity notes. I crave juicey strawberries, succulent grapes and sexy figs so much....
and here I see possibilities!

"Raspberry ketone" offers the warm deep note in the base of a fresh raspberry...it lacks the freshness and the juicy citrus aspect of the real fruit, but it is a warm fruity note that you can't find amongst the freely available citruses which form the only freely available fruit essential oils you can get.
"Butyl butyrate"smells of over ripe bananas to me, which gives me all kind of wild ideas of wierd and wonderful blends I may be able to create...
But so far, my cherished favourite amongst the bunch is "Strawberry fuarnone".
This baby to me speaks of caramelized strawberries.You know, the sticky stuff you end up with when you cook strawberry jam on the stove too long and the sugar caramelizes and the whole thing ends up as a rock hard lump at the bottom of the pan, enticing you to chew on it with it's sweet warm toffee smell.....
OK, so there's none of the depth and layers here that you get with strawberry jam of course, but there's enough of the warm caramel edge with a touch of fruitiness to tempt me....
So following my noses inspiriation, i set out to create jam notes, sweet, sugary and deep....
I sloshed around with some flowers and cirtus touches, and lo and behold, a very respectable apricot/peach jam accord appeared in a little bottle of sherry coloured liquid!

What made me uneasy working with it though, was that I had to literally dilute the fuck out of it to get it to a point where it didn't dominate the scent completely. And it's tenacity on the skin was a bit daunting too.
I can see why this is a good thing for conventional perfumers, but for me, it's very indestructability and intensity make me wary of it's actual biological effect on the body, both for those wearing perfumes and for the perfumer working with them.

After a few weeks playing with these things, I feel....well, a bit dirty.
And it feels heady, as if I had been dabbling in forbidden fruits, drinking strong liqour laced with a coctail of heroin and speed instead of my usual organic wine, or even an honest scotch whiskey!

My workshop smells of strange, intense things, no longer just my known and trusted friends, but wierdly intense and fluorescant things.
Will I use them in my perfumes? I don't know.....
I'm tempted for sure.....but will my soul ever be the same?
Will I lose myself down the road of so many perfumers, seeking the cheap thrill of new and intense olfactory effects and end up drowning in the cheap, the artifical world of conventional perfume chemistry...
Or will I find a way to dabble just occasionaly...and give in to the drugged visions of an Ultraviolet Cheshire Cat perfume, a Grape flavoured Grin hovering over a shimmering transparent body?

I'll keep you all posted.......

The Rebirth of Natural Perfumery

Our sense of smell is more strongly tied to our emotions than any of our other senses. Smells can evoke crystal clear memories too, like vanilla bringing back the scent of a grandmother baking a favourite cake, or the smokey smell of frankincense the deeply moving feeling of a spiritual ceremony...
Scent has been used for thousands of years to evoke special feelings in us...and the earliest from of perfumery was probably incense, burnt in spiritual ceremonies everywhere from Egyptian temples to North American Indian Sweat lodges to invoke a feeling of religious and spiritual awe and connectedness with tree resins and herbs burned to honour the Gods....

Body perfumes made from plant extracts have also been made for thousands of years....scented oils, hair unguents, waxy cones worn atop of ones head in Egytian high society parties where they slowly melted and spread spread their perfumes through the elaborate wigs they wore...
European perfumery deeloped realtively late in the picture, and took it's inspiration from the far older arabian scent traditions in the wake of the silk and spice trade.

Perfumers in Italy and France began to develop new ways of scenting both the body and the clothing worn by the European Aristocracy, and personalized perfumes developed by the better known perfumers became a much wanted status symbol.
These perfumes, scented leather gloves and pomanders made from exotic and precious ingredients such as true musk pods from the infamous musk ox, exquisite jasmine absolute painstakingly extracted from acres of jasmine flowers etc,  were rather expensive, and really only obtainable by the rich gentry...and as we came closer to our current day, the growth of modern chemistry began to give perfumers cheaper substances to play with.And with these cheap ingredients, and the invention of mechanized packaging and production methods, perfumery slowly became the realm of chemists and factory owners.
Perfume became a everyday item in every suburban household and the wholesale marketing of brand name perfume as a status symbol for everyone had begun.
With time though, people began to realize that a lot of the modern perfumes had sacrificed the magic that traditional perfumes had had, for the sake of a quick profit.

The buzz notes in perfumery became intensity, innovation and above all: price.
The main focus with a new perfume launch nowadays, is what celebrity it will be associated with.
I've seen numerous conventional perfume briefs, and the actual cost of the perfume itse;f is always the smallest part of the budget. Most of the money you pay for even the most expensive french perfumes, goes into packaging design, worldwide advertising campaigns! You'd be lucky to find $5 has been spent on the actual perfume itself!

And then Aromatherapy was born and began to breath a new lease of life into the fast paced plastic world of modern perfumery.

I had first bought essential oils in a conventional chemist in Germany around 1980...natural ingredients never went out of style in German, and conventional chemists still stocked a variety of herbal products and at the time, a limited number of essential oils, such as peppermint and rosemary. But it wasn't until some years later that the term "Aromatherapy" first appeared, along with a much wider range of essential oils.
The first literature on aromatherapy that I ever read was put out by a German company called "Primavera". It was a slim pamphlet listing their oils and the various effects on Mind and Body of each of them. I was fascinated! And spent all of my spare cash on them! I soon began to find other books on Aromatherapy,  and Tisserand and others began to do some serious research nto the subject, which has led to such a wealth of literature on the subject....

From there, Aromatherapy has grown to the point that you can find essential oils in every small town the world over...and increasingly, commericaly available scented products use the popularity of Aromatherapy in their own marketing. (Sometimes they even really use some percentage of actual essential oils in their formulations too!)

This rebirth of the popularity of natural scent ingredients has also led to the rebirth of Natural Perfumery.
Like myself, a small but growing number of independent perfumers started to experiement with the these newly available essential oils, and discovered that they offered a clarity, depth, complexity and beauty that simply wasn't there for them in modern perfumes.

I started to research ancient perfume recipes from all over the world, and looking for the herbs, resins and extracts mentioned in them as I travelled around the world.
And 20 years later, I now have a workshop full of all those lovely ingredients mentioned in the old texts and stories...

And people love them.
Conventional perfumers though will still poo poo this modern rebirth of the idea of useing natural ingredients...I have had countless perfumers tell me that it is impossible to make a great natural perfume...

Personally, I don't really care. My customers seem to disagree, and to my great amusement, the general publics love of Aromatherapy has forced more and more conventional perfumers to scrabble to keep up and start producing their own version of natural scents...
Problem is of course, they simply don't have the know how. Creating perfumes out of traditional natural ingredients isn't really part of a conventional perfumers training, where the focus is far more on chemistry and building notes out of individual chemicals...
And their profit margins lead them to fudge and even lie blatantly about the ingredients they are actually useing.
Which has lead to even health food stores stocking such brands such as "Pacifica" which advertises their "natural" tropical fruit scented wares at prices which real natural perfumes of course cannot compete with....
Then you have the inspired marketing of DKNY's "Pure"...."One drop of Vanilla" supposedly from some poor African village....
What about the rest of the thousands of drops of perfume in the bottle? What's it made of??

Sigh...anyway, getting back to the reality of naturals, and my delightfully messy workshop full of whole jars of REAL vanilla pods, frankincense resin from Omani trees, Essential oils from every possible flower and herb...
THIS is real natural perfumery...complicated, amazing and fascinating!

How Natural is Natural?

Well, the number of cosmetics out there touting the "natural" label is growing by the day....it's the new "thing"...which should make me happy, but.....
BUT (and that's a big but), most of them simply aren't.

There's an ever growing number of pretty sounding concoctions out there in bright shiny bottles with reasuring labels like "organic" and "vegan" plastered all over them, which have as much resemblance to the truly natural bottles of  flower extracts and herbs in my workshop as, well,  the bottle of commercial toilet cleaner my mother stuck in my cupboard many years ago in the hope I'd eventually use it.


I've spent over 20 years researching and developing natural perfumes. I've studied herbs and aromatherapy oils,and pored over ancient texts full of fascinating ingredients...and spoken to thousands of people at my stalls and on my website about natural perfumery and what it means.
And for years, the conventional perfume industry has belittled what we natural perfumers do, claiming it is archaic, and only modern aromachemicals give you a truely beautiful perfume.
Then all of a sudden, they've discovered that we're on to something! And all over the place, you suddenly see so called "natural" perfumes with bright pretty flower pictures!
A collegue pointed me towards a company I'm not going to name the other day....delightful packaging, pretty sounding scents...and "Beauty Habit", where they are sold, writes the following:

"L### & T## believes that natural formulas should function and not fail. These formulas have been vigorously tested for performance and stability.Each product is loaded with the very best natural and organic ingredients, while delivering a luxurious, skin-nurturing experience." And in the listing for their handcreams, list the scent as "botanical perfume blend".

But hang on a minute, the bottles contain completely clear fluid for starters (And natural perfumes just don't come in clear...)....let's have a look at the ingredients of one of them, ": "Vanilla Orchid, White Musk, Jasmine, Ebony Woods, Natural Alcohol"

OK, for starters, that's not an ingredient list, it's a fanciful list of the notes in the fragrance.
There is no such thing as vanilla orchid, white musk or ebony wood. And wtf is natural alcohol supposed to be? As opposed to un-natural alcohol?
These perfumes aren't natural. Not even nearly natural. Yet the advertising sells them as such, loud and clear. 


And it frustrates the hell out of me. Because people believe what they see written. And it seems, you can write whatever you want and get away with it. Loud and clear.

Mmfph.


Did you know that you can call anything vegan if it doesn't have animal ingredients in it? plastic gumboots are vegan by that definition!
And "Natural" can mean just about anything. I did a bit of research into natural flavours some time back, and discovered that a natural flavour can be made entirely of individual chemicals, as long as said chemicals were originally extracted from a natural source!
And mind you, that source doesn't have to have anything to do with the the fruit of vegetable it's imitating!

The Truth Seeker writes:  Natural and artificial flavors are now manufactured at the same chemical plants, places that few people would associate with Mother Nature.

To me that seems like cheating. All chemicals are originally extracted from natural sources. It is the degree of processing that takes them from natural to artificial.
Raspberries are natural. raspberry juice is natural. Raspberry ketone is a scent chemical that can be extracted from raspberry juice, or also made by chemical process from other chemicals. It is a white crystaline substance, that can be dissolved in alcohol and used in very diluted form in fruity scents to give the impression of raspberry....
Is it natural? I'm not sure. I have two kinds of raspberry scented ingredients in my workshop:
One, an alcoholic extract of raspberry, which is dark brownie red and slightly sticky, and needs to be filtered before I add it to scents. And the above said raspberry ketone, a strange little bottle of white powdery crystals....the crystals themselves have no scent until disolved further in alcohol.

There are a growing number of companies that are useing natural isolates like raspberry ketone in their perfumes too. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Like many botanical perfumers, I crave some notes that simply aren't available on the market....there are no natural violet extracts, and some fruit notes like "dewberry" simply don't exist in natural form. 
And it is a very tempting idea to follow along the "Natural Flavour" lines and start recreating these scent notes useing individual chemicals extracted from natural sources. But I feel uneasy about it.
The biggest question for me is where do we stop? When does a perfume go from being a real natural product crafted from exquisite absolutes and essential oils, to being, in reality, merely an artificially created scent concoction made purely from ingredients cooked up in a science lab like all of the others out there....

I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm experimenting with isolates, and keeping an open mind...but it does leave me feeling uneasy.
I feel somewhat guilty, as if I were experiementing with illegal drugs.....

I do know one thing for sure: If I do end up useing natural isolates in any of my perfumes, I will be honest and open about this.