With the health craze ever increasing, and society so much more concerned about making sure we use things that are not bad for us, it isn’t a wonder why Natural Perfume Oil use is rising so rapidly.

What No One Tells You

We can make it simple by breaking Perfumes into 3 types:

Natural
Synthetic
Artificial

Natural Perfumes

Natural oils are extracted from raw materials. The two historical transformation techniques are distillation by water vapor and the enfleurage. Extraction through volatile solvents and then with supercritical CO2, and today eco-extraction, improve the quality of the products.

Essential Oils

Through distillation, essential oil is retained.

The use of essential oils have always been around for massage and aromatherapy but are now becoming increasingly popular for use in perfumes and as attars too (alcohol-free and chemical-free perfumes).

Perfume ingredients referred as essential oils are obtained by steam distillation. It is a popular technique using an alembic to produce aromatic compounds from plants, flowers, leaves, roots, agarwood and much more.

Raw materials are placed on perforated trays in the upper part of the still pot and the lower part is filled with water that is brought to the boil. Steam from boiling water is passed through the raw material to capture the scent-bearing compounds.

The vapour is cooled and the condensate resulting from this process is then collected in a Florentine flask.

The fragrant oil and the water are naturally separated because of their different densities: indeed oil floats on water because it less dense than water and we removed it, this is the essential oil.

Scented water is called hydrosol and is sometimes kept for other purposes; it is the case for rose water and orange blossom water.

Most of our ingredients come from this process: wonderful roses, Dehn Al Oud, French lavender and much more…

Absolute Oils

Concrete is produced by enfleurage or extraction of fresh material, then transformed into absolute. Resinoids can be obtained by extracting dry materials.

The treatment of fresh raw materials is carried out in their countries of origin, whilst dry ones are exported, in particular around Grasse in France. Rich in this technical heritage, the region of Grasse in the essential reference point for the production of scented extracts, as well as the transmission of knowledge.

Synthetic Perfumes

A synthetic fragrance is a natural fragrance that humans know how copying it. Clearly, this is made by someone following a transformation of a product that can be natural or artificial. For example: by reacting oxygen with hydrogen (2H2 + O2 = 2H2O), we obtain the same water as the river water…A natural synthetic water.

Another example: The fruit aroma. Let’s have a look to the vanillin: it is a molecule in pods of vanilla but that humans synthesize from cloves, wood lignin or beet pulp. So we obtain again a natural synthetic product.

A natural fragrance oil can be made using Aromatic Isolates: Oils that are made in a lab but derived from natural sources. One of the aromatic components of a plant is isolated from a complex scent. This isolated scent is part of something that is real, but in and of itself, would not be found isolated in nature.

A good example of synthetic perfume is white musk. Synthetic white musk can come from natural or artificial origin depending on ingredients used to make it.

In 1888, Mr. Baur accidentally discovered an artificial musk while making research, but this one was toxic.

Synthetic white musk is a recent addition to perfume making, the first synthetic musk also known as white musk, musk tahara or musk abyad in the perfume industry was discovered in 1926.

It is used as a substitute for black and white musk. Many types of synthetic musk are available in powder form and each variation has its own scent.

Natural ambrette flower seeds can be used in their natural form as a musk substitute. the seeds can sometimes be confused with raw, black musk, although in reality, their textures are very different. Ambrette seeds are more grain-like, while the texture of fresh, raw musk is similar to moist, black soil.

Crystallized ambrette musk is used in many perfume recipes, synthetic ambrette musk comes from ambrette flowers, which are found in India and subtropical Asia. This plant shares a similar fragrance with deer musk and can, therefore, be used to create a natural substitute.

Artificial Perfumes

An artificial perfume is made by humans with chemical products. It is the perfect time to remind that we don’t use any chemical products in our attars. Simply like that.

Differences Between Natural and Synthetic Perfumes