Part 2 of the article Esxence 2023 – the lowdown on the yearly niche perfume Mecca
So I was mainly interested in speaking to brands claiming to be natural or “green” to see exactly what they were doing and whether the goalpost was being moved. I was also curious about brands from very different parts of the world, because quite frankly, at least in Europe, what we get is still very much Europe-centric, with some US brands present of course but, with still a heavy preponderance of French made scents.
This led me to J-Scent, a Japanese brand offering quirky scents such a “sumo wrestler” and “roasted green tea”, in eau de parfum concentration at 100 US$ for 50ml. They are currently sold in Japan and the US but were looking for EU distribution. You can tell they are not sold in the EU just by looking at their website, with the ingredients listed as just “perfume and alcohol” (nice and simple, eh?), without any allergen specifications as required by EU legislation. They struck me as odd ball like and different, not all necessarily all wearable but certainly worth a sniff. Anyway, if something different appeals to you, watch this space as they should be available in Europe soon.
In terms of green brands I spoke to, the first one was NOUT a French brand offering 3 eau de toilette an 3 eau de parfum that only use natural materials. The owner, Laurence, uses 100% natural ingredients (so no absolutes are used, as they go through hexane extraction, which is a gas derived from the petro chemical industry) and is also certified “Bio Cosmos Organic”(below each scent you will have specified the percentage of the raw materials used that are bio). In terms of packaging, it is not refillable, the caps are wooden and purportedly the brand uses as little plastic as possible. She has worked with Robertet in Grasse to develop the fragrances and they sell for the eau de toilette at 100 ml/186EUR; 15 ml/42 eur, and for the eau de parfum 100ml/198EUR; 15ml/48EUR. My take is that she is being transparent about what she is doing and has gone through the trouble and considerable expense of getting all the certification, putting most of the effort in the juice rather than the packing in terms of concept.
I met also a Berlin based brand called AER, whose scents are made entirely of botanical ingredients (so does that means no animal derived product?) using, to quote the brand, “ethically sourced plant derived ingredients”. The perfumer and founder, Ted Young-Ing, worked in the fashion and perfume industry, but not as a perfumer, before launching his brand in 2017. He mentions he is self-taught, apart from a short sting at the perfumery school ISIPCA. Being self-taught myself, I have nothing but respect for someone who launches such a project but I struggled a little to understand what he meant when he mentioned that they source their materials directly from producers. The palette of a natural perfumer, although much smaller than that of a traditional perfumer who typically has thousand materials at his disposal, still includes a few hundred materials (at least 200 I would think). These natural materials are sourced at the four corners of the world: vetiver from Java or Haiti, Frankincense from Somalia, Rose from Bulgaria or Maroco most likely, Pachouli from Java, etc. These are not all easy places where to operate as an outsider I would imagine and so I really can’t imagine someone who doesn’t have long established ties with producers in the regions pulling this off. So again, maybe they have sourced 10 ingredients directly from the producers and have another 100 that are not. Or maybe every single material they used is sourced from a producer they have selected directly. We don’t know.
So my take is that here again you have the issue of having to take the brand’s word for what they do, which I have no reason to doubt, but it’s a slippery slope. A notable feature, which we are slowly seeing with some green brands, is that they list for each scent all the ingredients that go into the composition, which I think reflects well on their ethos. In terms of packaging, this does not seem to be where they have put the most effort in terms of sustainability, although on their website, there is the option to buy the full product with or without box, so that’s a step in the direction of a refillable option. The scents all seemed to my nose quite woody and resinous. No real flower bomb or citrusy affair in sight. They retail at 135 EUR for 30 ML.
I also spoke to another French brand called “Les Parfumeurs du monde” who also use 100% natural ingredients. I don’t know if they have a certification, but my understanding is there is an ISO certification (ISO 9235) that corresponds to what IFRA identifies as a natural perfume. To materials”. My understanding is that this would mean sticking to the “Cosmos Natural certification” which allows, in addition to plant derived raw materials, animal-derived material (such as beeswax) and ingredients developed from bioconversion (so I assume synthetic molecules developed from a natural material). This represents 40% of the full perfumer’s palette.
They also claim to give a percentage (which one?) of their sales to an NGO called “Coeur de Forêt” that supports producers around the world in terms of equitable pay and working conditions, as well as another NGO called “Parfumeurs sans Frontières”. Again, the engagement is laudable but the details scarce.
One of the owners who was there, himself a perfumer, Thierry Bernard, showed me a few of their scents and you could sense a genuine love of perfume. He was also one of the few owners of “green” brands I met that was happy to engage in any in-depth discussion. They have called upon the “crème de la crème” of French perfumers to develop their collection: Bertrand Duchaufour, Michel Roudnistka, Nathalie Feisthauer etc.
It shows. The scents are beautiful and very polished, certainly the most interesting, it seemed to me on first impression, of the three natural brands I sampled. The caps again seemed to be made of wood (although I should check but I believe this is just a cover for the plastic cap underneath, as I dont think an actual wooden cap is possible for compatibility reasons..)
They retail at 145EUR for 50 ML.
There are other brands I spoke to but can’t go into details about all of them: photographer and independent perfumer Christèle Jacquemin developing scents based of photos she has taken during her travels, “Spiritum” a new French brand that based its collection on chakras and numerology, “Maison Violet” with the three musketeers young ISIPCA graduates that have employed Nathalie Lorson to create a fragrance collection for the old maison they resuscitated, “Binet Papillon” a historic French brand from the 17th century also claiming to use a high percentage of naturals, with a rather surly owner and finally Jacques Fath, who, “oyez oyez” is releasing soon an eau de parfum concentration of the beautiful Iris de Fath (which was so far available in extrait de parfum at the insane price of over 1400 eur) which will retail at around 250 EUR if I am not mistaken (for 50 ml) and has also been created by Patrice Revillard who created the extrait.
So this is not for me for this years’ Esxence, interesting, exhausting and raising possibly more questions about the future of perfumery than it answers…
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