The Scented Life: All about fragrance

Synthetics

by Amy on April 26th, 2007

Synthetics (as I’ve mentioned in previous posts) get a pretty bad rap these days. I’m not sure where people got the idea that “all natural” equals beautiful, healthy or even desirable. Such lovely things as Ebola are also all-natural! And believe it or not, most of the perfumes you wear are constructed solely or primarily from synthetically derived perfume oils. Chemicals, with eighteen-syllable names. I have my theories on why some people are so anti-chemical (chemical qua chemical, mind you, and not truly objectionable chemicals like dioxin or DDT). Water is a chemical. My allergy medicine is a chemical. The fluids in your car are chemicals. And so on.

Chandler Burr, perfume essayist for the NYT, wrote a great article a while ago on just this topic, and I would like all of you to read it. Even though there are perfumers making all-natural and even organic perfumes (from LaVanilla to Ayala Sender), the focus of most mainstream perfumes is the end result, not the process.

An excerpt from the article Synthetic No. 5:

Prejudice against synthetics is like any other prejudice. There’s the entry-level misperception: “Natural materials are always good.” Wrong. A low-quality natural narcissus is going to smell like garbage, while a good synthetic heliotropin is an olfactory marvel, as if a tonka bean had somehow been crossed with a cloud. Second misperception: “Synthetics are cheap.” Are you kidding? The best synthetics, like the best natural ingredients, are extremely expensive. One terrific synthetic called Amberiff costs more than $1,200 a pound.

Then there’s the slightly more sophisticated level of ignorance: “A synthetic is more likely to cause an allergic reaction.” Wrong again. A natural is more apt to do that. Take Sandalore, a synthetic molecule that smells like sandalwood. It’s exactly one molecule: C14H26O. Use Sandalore to get your sandalwood note, and there will be only one possibility of an allergic reaction. Use a natural sandalwood, which contains hundreds of molecules — alpha- and beta-Santalol, Spirosantalol, beta-Curcumene, (Z)-Nucifero, etc. — and you’ve got hundreds of different possible allergic reactions. Moreover, synthetic sandalwoods are ecofriendly. The sandalwood forests of India are being destroyed at a terrible rate, and the price of natural sandalwood is skyrocketing (currently heading up to $800 a pound). One perfumer I know told me that because of this, he now refuses to use natural materials in perfumes.

“Synthetics are ‘modern’ and ‘American,’ and naturals are ‘French.”’ Completely wrong. There’s no French-er house than Guerlain, no more classic collection of perfumes, and Guerlain perfumers began the synthetics revolution in 1889 by pouring three synthetics into the soul of its great perfume Jicky. The classic L’Heure Bleue (1912) derives its beauty from methyl anthranilate; Mitsouko (1919) uses the very elegant synthetic aldehyde C-14 (which smells deliciously of delicate, ripe peach); and the immortal Shalimar (1925) has, among other synthetics, ethylvanillin and quinolines. The sleek and, in my view, underrated Samsara has Sandalore, and just a few years ago the perfumer Maurice Roucel put a really cool molecule — cis-3 hexenyl (it smells, by itself, of freshly cut grass) — into his modern classic L’Instant de Guerlain.

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