Natural or synthetic ingredients: how to tell them apart?

Ismy perfume natural? Is it really the result of harvesting thousands of flowers, or was it created in a chemist's laboratory? These are the kinds of questions that many of you are asking. A confusion largely maintained by marketing, which promises us petals where there are sometimes only test tubes...

What you need to know is that everything in perfumery is subtle - starting with the difference between natural, naturally-derived and synthetic ingredients! To understand it all in 5 minutes, Bastille guides you through the different families of ingredients that make up perfumes. Hang on, we're off to your high school chemistry classes!

Nature painting

The first family of ingredients in perfumery: the natural ones. Well, this is not very complicated: an ingredient is said to be natural when it is directly extracted from nature, and has never been modified. Thus, after distillation of the natural raw material (a flower, a bark... or even a mixture, such as hay for example, which has a sublime smell), one or several products are obtained, each one very much used in perfumery and cosmetics:

- an essential oil
- an absolute
- a hydrolat

These 3 names are exclusively reserved for natural ingredients. To put it simply, an essential oil is always natural - and to understand everything about natural fragrances, we let you discover this article. 

Before the 19th century, perfumes and cosmetics were entirely natural. They were made from plants, animal secretions (highly prized for their eroticism), minerals... Even today, natural ingredients can be easily recognised on the labels of your cosmetics, as they are always written in Latin, whereas synthetic ingredients usually have an English name. For example, the Latin name of the bergamot in our perfume Hors-Piste is: citrus aurantium bergamia. So it doesn't just sound Roman because the fruit comes from Italy! By the way, if you want to learn how to decipher the labels on your cosmetic products, we highly recommend reading this article that will make you a pro.

Why didn't we stick to 100% natural in perfumery? Simply because the advent of synthesis in the 19thcentury opened up the creative horizons of perfumers: from 400 natural notes, these lucky people went on to 4000 notes to create their perfumes in total freedom! Moreover, 100% natural fragrances are often less sophisticated than perfumes containing synthesis. This is mainly due to the fact that synthetic musks, which add a lot of sweetness and elegance to perfumes, are not allowed.

That's why, at Bastille, we've chosen to keep 5% of our fragrances free of synthetic ingredients, i.e. around 1/3 of the perfume concentrate, which is mixed with alcohol to obtain your perfume. This guarantees balanced, creative and seductive fragrances!

But then... what is a synthetic ingredient? Where does it come from, and why is synthesis so scary?

Ability to synthesise 

A synthetic ingredient is a molecule that has been artificially created using a particular chemical reaction, or reactions (yes, now you regret playing Pokémon in your ninth grade chemistry class). In practical terms: chemists assemble new molecules from smaller compounds, just as an artist would put together a painting with different tubes of paint.

Some molecules are completely invented, and bear no resemblance to anything that occurs naturally on Earth. Others, on the contrary, are inspired by nature, often with the aim of reproducing it at lower cost. The goal remains the same: to broaden the perfumer's palette in order to sophisticate the olfactory pyramid of perfumes. For most synthetic raw materials add body to perfumes, and also act as developers of natural notes. For example: if a perfume contains lavender, adding linalool (one of the elements that naturally make up lavender, but which is usually recreated with synthesis), will boost the fresh facet of lavender.

Today, synthesis is controversial, especially following the banning of certain molecules that are problematic for our health and the environment. If you are concerned about the subject, we explain everything you need to know in this article: should we be wary of synthesis?

Natural or synthetic: the nose between two chairs 

This is where it gets complicated: there are raw materials whose natural or synthetic status is debated. I might as well tell you that among perfumers, the subject is as hot as sichuan pepper! Among the debated cases, we find the "isolates" and the so-called "hemi-synthetic" products. So far, it doesn't tell you anything... and we don't blame you.

Insulate me, Insulate me

An isolate is a component isolated from a natural raw material. For example, the famous geraniol is present in rose, indole in jasmine, linalool in lavender. You have probably already seen them on your labels.

To extract them, the essential oil is fractionated, separating its various compounds. In our fragrance Bataille, Nicolas Beaulieu used Patchouli Cœur: a very fresh, fractionated patchouli, freed from all the earthy facets of classic patchouli essence. It's a natural raw material, because no chemical modification is made to the molecule we're looking for. And that's priceless! Or rather, it is... That's just it: an isolate can be twice as expensive than the essential oil used to extract it (logic: if you only eat the blue crocodiles in your pack of sweets, you'll need to buy a lot of packets of sweets for just one snack).

This high price explains why today, synthesis reproduces these famous isolates. So there is natural geraniol and synthetic geraniol. Unfortunately, we don't have any tips on how to tell them apart in your perfumes... Most of the time, if the brands don't specify it, they use the synthetic reproduction of these isolates because they are much cheaper.

A few years ago, isolates were rarely used. Now that natural products are in vogue, they have become more widely used to broaden perfumers' natural palette. And this is causing quite a stir in the perfume world... If you think about it, an isolate represents just a tiny fraction of the classic natural material. Anything that isn't used is wasted, which explains its exorbitant price. So there are pros and cons to isolates: on the one hand, they broaden the perfumer's palette and eliminate certain undesirable facets of natural material; on the other, they are criticized for their price and ecological impact. At Bastille, we believe that in life, it's all a question of measure: a little bit of isolate in a formula is fine, as long as you don't overuse it!

Attention, subtlety

A hemi-synthetic product, on the other hand, is obtained by chemical reaction from a natural raw material. It is therefore considered a synthetic material of natural origin (do you see the subtlety?). This is the case with ethyl linalool, a hemi-synthetic product that comes from linalool (a natural isolate), which itself comes from lavender.

Here is a little diagram to summarise: in green, the ingredients considered natural, in orange those considered synthetic. If you've followed us this far, congratulations: you're already a real pro.

Identical in nature, the false friend

Because the perfume industry felt there wasn't enough confusion, it created a new category: that of "natural identical" synthetic products. Welcome to the con category... A "nature identical" product is simply the name given to a synthetic molecule that exists in nature and whose smell is reproduced in an extremely faithful way. In short, it is at best a slightly sexier name for a synthetic molecule like any other...

As you can see, it's hard to tell the difference between natural, natural-derived and synthetic products. Brands can sometimes play on words, even though they're supposed to help you see things more clearly. That's why, at Bastille, we've listed all the ingredients contained in our fragrances on every product page, as you can see, for example, at Un Deux Trois Soleil. They are also sorted into natural on the one hand, and synthetic on the other.

So, what do you say? Have we lost you or have you read us this far? 

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Photos: unknown, IFF LMR and Thanh Vy
Sources: IFF and the Osmotheque