Natural vs synthetic: why it matters

Turn over almost any scented product and you will find a single word on the ingredient list: fragrance. Or parfum. It looks like one ingredient. It is not.

What the word conceals

In most jurisdictions, fragrance is a protected trade secret. A manufacturer may list dozens — sometimes hundreds — of individual aroma chemicals under that one word, and is not required to name any of them. The justification is the protection of proprietary formulas. The effect is that the consumer cannot know what they are buying.

This is not a fringe concern. It is the standard disclosure practice across the majority of the perfume, cosmetics and home fragrance industry.

What synthetics are good at

It would be dishonest to pretend synthetics have no merit. They are consistent between batches. They are cheap. They are stable in ways botanicals are not, and they can produce notes that do not exist in nature or that would require unsustainable harvesting to obtain.

Some natural materials carry their own problems. A handful of essential oils are potent sensitisers. Wild harvesting of sandalwood and agarwood has done real ecological damage. Natural is not automatically the safer or more responsible choice, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Where we stand, and why

Our objection is less about chemistry than about disclosure and effect. We formulate without synthetic aroma chemicals, parabens, phthalates or artificial fixatives, and we are willing to accept the consequences: batch variation, shorter throw, higher cost.

We do it because our compositions are built around what a fragrance is meant to do, not only how it smells. The traditions we draw on — the classical Indian scent sciences — treated botanicals as active material with an effect on the person. That framework does not survive being reproduced in aroma chemicals.

You may reasonably conclude that a well-made synthetic fragrance suits you better. What matters is that you are able to make the choice with the information in front of you — which the word fragrance, standing alone on a label, does not allow.