If you’ve made it this far in the De-“mist”-ifying Perfume series (Part I here and Part II here), you already know that perfume is more nuanced than marketing headlines and bottle copy would have us believe. In this final installment, we’re tackling some of the most repeated myths around natural perfumery, synthetics, and what those labels really mean in practice.
These are questions I get regularly from customers, readers, and even people who’ve been wearing perfume for decades. They’re understandable questions, but the answers are rarely simple or binary.
So, let’s sort fact from fiction.
“Aromatherapy blends = perfume”
Aromatherapy and perfumery share materials, but they are not the same discipline.
Aromatherapy blends are typically created with therapeutic intent, using essential oils selected for their perceived physiological or emotional effects. The focus is often on function rather than scent evolution, structure, or wearability.
Perfumery, including natural perfumery, is about composition. A finished perfume is designed to evolve over time on skin, balancing top, heart, and base notes, volatility, diffusion, and longevity. Materials are chosen not just for what they are, but for how they interact with one another.
This doesn’t make aromatherapy inferior or superior to perfumery. It just makes it different.
If you want a deeper dive into where these practices overlap and where they diverge, I’ve written extensively about this distinction in both my blog and in ÇaFleureBon’s Notes From The Lab column.
“Natural perfumes are chemical-free”
This one refuses to die.
Everything you can smell, see, or touch is made of chemicals. Lavender essential oil, rose absolute, and vanilla extract are all complex mixtures of naturally occurring chemical compounds. “Natural” does not mean “non-chemical.” It simply describes the source of those chemicals.
A natural perfume may contain hundreds of identifiable chemical constituents, many of which have long, intimidating names. That doesn’t make them artificial or any better or worse than synthetic ingredients.
If this feels counterintuitive, you’re not alone. I’ve unpacked this myth in depth in a couple different columns (here and here), because it’s one of the most misunderstood ideas in fragrance.
“Natural perfumes are allergen-free”
In reality, natural perfumes may contain more potential allergens than synthetic ones.
Many naturally derived materials, especially essential oils, absolutes, and CO2 extracts, contain compounds that are known fragrance allergens. These occur naturally in plants and are present whether a material is wild-harvested, organic, or steam-distilled.
That doesn’t mean synthetic materials are automatically safer. Some people are sensit”ive to certain synthetic fragrance compounds, just as others react to naturally occurring ones. If someone is allergic to a specific chemical constituent, the body doesn’t care whether it came from a flower or a lab.
This is why ingredient awareness matters more than blanket statements about “natural” or “synthetic.”
“Synthetics are unhealthy, naturals are safe”
This myth is usually rooted in fear rather than chemistry.
Natural materials can be extremely concentrated. Essential oils and absolutes heavily concentrated plant matter. They are potent extracts that require careful handling, formulation, and dosage. “Natural” does not mean “gentle.”
On the synthetic side, many fragrance materials are extensively studied and are considered safe for use at regulated levels. Industry standards, including ongoing review by organizations like IFRA, exist specifically to limit exposure to materials that could cause harm when misused.
Safety in perfumery isn’t about ideology. It’s about concentration, exposure, and regulation.
“Perfumes can be allergen-free”
Short answer: not really. It’s theoretically possible in very limited circumstances (usually using materials without reportable allergens), but it would be highly unusual and challenging from an artistic perspective.
In many countries, certain fragrance allergens must be disclosed on ingredient labels at extremely low thresholds, 0.001% or higher in a finished leave-on product. At those levels, even trace amounts of naturally occurring compounds trigger disclosure requirements.
This doesn’t mean a perfume is unsafe. It means transparency is required.
Any brand claiming a perfume is completely allergen-free should be met with healthy skepticism. Because fragrance ingredient disclosure hasn’t been required by FDA in the U.S. until recently (and the final standards still haven’t been published), a lot of smaller fragrance manufacturers who sell outside of the EU and UK have avoided disclosing their allergens or other ingredients. So this makes the perfume ingredients hard to understand, but it doesn’t make them allergen-free.
Even in the rare circumstance that a perfume manages to avoid all reportable allergens (or keeps allergens below the reporting threshold), technically anything can cause an allergic reaction. So a perfume might not contain broadly-recognized fragrance allergens, but you might have a reaction to the fragrance, regardless. So, it might officially be marketed as “allergen-free,” but it wouldn’t be allergen-free to you.
“‘Clean’ fragrance means natural fragrance”
“Clean” is a marketing term, not a regulated one.
A fragrance labeled as “clean” may still contain synthetic materials. In fact, I can’t recall ever seeing a perfume that principally uses the “clean” label for marketing that was also all-natural. There is no universal standard, no legal definition, and no consistent enforcement for “clean.”
If you want to know whether a perfume is truly 100% natural, you need to look beyond buzzwords and learn how to read labels, disclosures, and brand language more critically. If it says it’s “clean,” but doesn’t explicitly say that it’s all-natural, you can safely assume it uses some synthetics.
“Most perfume is natural”
The vast majority of modern perfumery relies heavily on synthetic materials. That’s not inherently good or bad. It’s simply the reality of scale, consistency, cost, and creative flexibility.
True all-natural perfumery represents a very small segment of the fragrance world, and it requires different sourcing, formulation constraints, and creative decisions.
“Perfume notes are the ingredient list”
Notes are a storytelling tool, not a formula disclosure.
When a perfume lists notes like bergamot, jasmine, or vanilla, it’s describing an olfactive impression, not necessarily every material used to achieve that effect. A vanilla note, for example, might be created using multiple materials working together, or it might come from actual vanilla. But you won’t necessarily know this from the notes list.
This applies to both natural and synthetic perfumery (although natural perfumery tends to list more actual ingredients in their notes). Notes tell you how a perfume smells, not how it’s made.
“‘Natural spray’ means the perfume is natural”
This one is especially misleading.
“Natural spray” refers to the delivery mechanism, not the composition of the fragrance. It distinguishes a spray bottle that’s operated using your finger (a “natural spray”) from one using an aerosol propellant to dispense the product. It has nothing to do with whether the perfume itself is natural or synthetic.
Again, learning to decode perfume language matters.
Final thoughts
Natural perfumery isn’t better because it’s natural, and synthetic/mixed media perfumery isn’t worse because it isn’t. They are different approaches with different tools, constraints, and possibilities.
The real goal isn’t to choose sides, but to understand what you’re wearing, why it smells the way it does, and how to make informed choices based on your own preferences and sensitivities.
If this series has done its job, you should now feel better equipped to see through the mist.