In a perfect world, it would be really easy to know if a perfume is all-natural or not. For example, you could tell by looking at a company’s website or the perfume packaging and know for sure. However, we live in this world, where very few things are as easy as they should be.

NATURAL VS. MIXED MEDIA FRAGRANCES

Natural perfumes, at least how most natural perfumers define them, come wholly from natural sources, including the diluent that’s used (usually alcohol for a spray perfume, possibly oil for a roll-on perfume, or wax and oil for a solid perfume), plus all of the materials used to fragrance the perfume, any stabilizers, antioxidants, and so on. So, all of those things are naturally-derived and you end up with a natural perfume.

Mixed media perfumes, which is most perfumes available commercially, are a combination of synthetic materials, meaning materials that are commercially produced in a lab typically from petrochemicals, but possibly also from white or green chemistry, along a with some volume of natural materials. They typically include synthetic stabilizers and antioxidants. perfumers’ alcohol with a synthetic bittering agent, etc.

Mainstream perfume is mixed media; there could be exceptions, but I can’t think of any. Niche or artisanal or independent perfumes also tend to be mixed media, with a small percentage (like my perfumes) being 100% natural. So, you can probably already sense that any given perfume is much more likely to be mixed media than all natural. Natural perfumes are definitely in a very small minority of the commercial fragrance world. Now that we’ve defined Natural vs. Mixed Media fragrances, let’s cover a few things to look for when trying to determine if a perfume is all-natural or not.

ALL-NATURAL or 100% NATURAL - (But maybe not…)

The first thing I’d look for are the terms 100% natural or all-natural on the website. Natural perfumers are kind of like cross-fit athletes, pilots, and vegans. You’ll know it because we’ll be sure to tell you about it.

“NATURAL SPRAY” vs. NATURAL PERFUME

But not so fast. Watch out for the words Natural Spray. You might see the term “Natural Spray” on a fragrance website, box, or bottle, but it has nothing to do with the perfume being natural.

In fact, it has nothing to do with the perfume itself, at all. A perfume could be 100% synthetic and still legally have “Natural Spray” on the label. Why? Because “Natural Spray” refers to the spray mechanism on the bottle. If a perfume doesn’t use an aerosol propellant to dispense the perfume, meaning that you use your finger to press the perfume spray and it comes out just from that action, it’s considered a Natural Spray. So, this has zero relationship to the perfume itself. But hey, it’s a great way to cause confusion for consumers. I need to credit Sarah McCartney of 4160Tuesdays and Scenthusiasm for calling this one out.

USE OF “SAFE SYNTHETICS”

You’d think that when a website says that a perfume is all-natural, 100% natural, or maybe just “natural,” that it’s all natural, right? Well, in doing my research, I’ve found a few cases where companies called their perfumes all-natural, but then mentioned the use of safe synthetics somewhere on the website or included materials in their ingredients lists that don’t occur in nature. Here are a few examples to look out for. A lot of mainstream and indie perfumes use synthetic materials like woody Iso E Super or Iso G Super (or Timbersilk, Anthamber, Orbitone T); synthetic florals like Hedione or Hedione HC; synthetic musks like Ethylene Brassylate, Muscone, Muscenone, Galaxolide, Edenolide, Celestolide, Velvione, Cashmeran, etc.; dihydromyrcenol, which is citrusy-floral, Amber Xtreme or Cedramber, which are ambery materials, and the list goes on. These are all synthetic materials, so if a perfume contains any amount of any of them, they can’t be 100% natural. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with them, but their inclusion means that the perfume just isn’t all natural.

CERTAIN PERFUME NOTES

Even if a perfume doesn’t list any of these materials specifically as ingredients or mention the use of safe synthetics in their brand story or perfume details, you can look for certain fragrance notes such as “velvet wood” and “cashmere wood” and sometimes “white woods,” “white musks,” “clean musk,” and so on, as these frequently signal the use of these types of synthetic aroma chemicals. It doesn’t guarantee that they’re always mixed media perfumes because natural perfumes could use some of those descriptors, but it usually does.

“CLEAN” FRAGRANCES vs. ALL-NATURAL FRAGRANCES

 I’ve noticed a lot of confusion on the idea of clean fragrances. A perfume website might state that their fragrances are clean, and never suggest that they’re natural, but then they suddenly show up in a website or print magazine article about natural perfumes. Clean perfume doesn’t mean natural perfume. All natural perfume probably could probably always be considered clean perfume, but clean doesn’t have anything to do with a perfume being natural or not. Clean is a marketing term that usually refers to a product being free from certain ingredients, such as phthalates, which natural perfume materials don’t have. When I was doing some consumer research for my brand, I found a bunch of articles online, most of them from pretty reputable publications, about natural perfumes and only about 20 - 30% of the perfumes and brands listed were natural - the rest were clean, but not all-natural, so even beauty industry journalists and publishers are sometimes getting these terms confused.

READ THE ABOUT US / OUR STORY SECTION OF THE WEBSITE CAREFULLY

The About Us or Our Story section of a brand’s website will often tell you if a perfume brand is all-natural or not. If it mentions the use of safe synthetics or naturals and “other safe ingredients” or “sustainable ingredients” or says something like, “we use naturals whenever possible,” they’re not a 100% natural brand.

THE COLOR (SOMETIMES)

Natural perfumes are typically pretty colorful without needing to add any natural or artificial coloring to them, because most natural perfumery materials are highly colored. You can check out the perfumes on my website to get an idea of how colorful they can be, especially at high concentrations. If a perfume is completely colorless and the brand attests to its naturalness, I would definitely take a closer look and ask some questions. Theoretically, it might still be natural if it was manufactured by one of the large perfume houses, for example, and they used mostly natural isolates and all of their absolutes and essential oils were purchased as decolorized. But keep in mind that it isn’t possible to get a decolorized version of every natural material…and they’re almost impossible to come by in smaller quantities. You generally need to have access to major naturals producers who see enough demand for decolorization of that material, and purchase it in huge quantities to be able to get to the limited absolutes and EOs that are available decolorized. So if you‘re seeing that a brand claims to be all natural (especially a small handmade brand), but all of their perfumes are completely colorless or very lightly colored, they may not be all natural. On the other end of this, a perfume could be mixed media and deeply artificially colored to appear as If it’s natural. If a brand is being honest about using pigments or dyes to color their fragrances, it should be called out on their ingredients list. For example, it might mention a D&C or FD&C color or an iron oxide or chromium oxide pigment and/or use an INCI ingredient name that starts with the letters “CI” followed by 5 numbers.

Examples would be CI 14700 for FD&C Red 4 or CI 42090 for Blue No. 1 FD&C Lake.

Also look at the bottle closely. It could be that the glass of the bottle itself is colored, but the perfume is completely colorless or lightly colored.

THE PRICE (OFTEN)

Finally, if you see a perfume say that it uses high quality all-natural materials but then is really inexpensive, watch out. The brand may legitimately think that it’s using all-natural materials, but chances are good that they’re sourcing from a fraudulent supplier at impossible prices and they’re being sold cheap synthetic fragrance oils as natural materials. Or, the company is marketing their perfumes as all natural, but they’re really only using some naturals and mostly synthetics, as I mentioned earlier in the video.

THE WRAP-UP

So, I hope that some of these tips will help you do your own detective work in figuring out if a perfume or a brand is all-natural or not. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me at hello@onthenoseperfumes.com. And don’t forget to sign up for emails from On The Nose Perfumes. You can do that here on the website. In the next blog post, I’ll walk you through why natural perfumes are so expensive. Thanks for reading!