Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Below is a letter I just received from Tony Burfield of Cropwatch. Feel free to redistribute it. Dear All, Citrus Oils: the Situation Cropwatch is directly opposing IFRA's Risk Assessment on furanocoumarins, and its proposals to severely restrict citrus oil usage in cosmetics products. Unfortunately, because of the lack of transparency exercised by RIFM, IFRA and the EU Commission over this matter. it means that unless you, dear reader, belong to a professional association, probably won't get to see IFRA's information letter IL799 on the topic, or the Risk Assessment that the EU Commission was given in late 2007 by IFRA. IFRA have apparently suggested a cosy future chat with the EU Commissioners, some unnamed industry moguls and fragrance consumers (presumably IFRA or RIFM members) to 'explain matters' - presumably code for agreeing their highly restrictive citrus oil proposals (see below) with the EU regulator. Nobody with an independent or contrary opinion is to

My gigantic plant of Jasmine sambac Duke of Tuscany is starting to bloom. This sambac is slow growing and has huge - for jasmine huge I should qualify - flowers about the size of a tiny carnation, full of tightly-packed petals and the most tender non-indolic jasmine scent ever. I just adore it! I just plucked the first blossom of the season from it today, and left one on for the birds and lizards to enjoy ;-) It's full of about-to-open buds, and I hope I have some to bring to the lunch tomorrow of the Miami NP crew so they can enjoy it. I coined the organoleptic term "tender" and I have to add that to the Aromatic Lexicon on the evaluation sheet my students use. So many of the home-grown jasmines I have become "tender" upon tincturing. Sigh. They're just so lovely, tender, powdery, soft, sweet and delicious. April and May are the big jasmine blooming months here in Miami, not August and September as they are in India and France. Don't know the reason fo

Click on the photo for enlarged view Long before the marketers and perfume houses got savvy, a display spilled the coal, er, the beans: the source of many of the synthetic aromachemicals used in perfumery since the 1880's were made from coal or petroleum sources. The lady in the photo seems to be raising a glass lid over a container that holds scent strips of the coal-derived scent, and the glass jars on top hold the natural materials of fragrance. I can identify rose and jasmine in the jars. Not much else to say about this, just that I do prefer the complexity, richness, sustainability and beauty of natural aromatics.

Luca Turin, perfume critic, author of the soon-to-be-released The Perfume Guide just wrote about a custom perfume he had made by Dominique Dubrana of Italy . We in the Guild know him as a Professional Perfumer who prefers to be called Salaam, a longtime member of my Yahoo Natural Perfumery group and Guild member. His keen insights and helpful comments offered in our private group always have a ring of experience and clarity, and he gets to the soul of the matter with ease. Turin found it refreshing that Salaam did not require a questionnaire about astrological sign, personality traits, or other psychological items that are so often the tool of the custom perfumer. Instead Turin got to choose the raw materials from a list. The resultant perfume has increased the openly-skeptical Turin's opinion of what a perfume made only with natural ingredients can be - and we must thank Salaam for that. Additionally, Salaam is the only natural perfumer included in Turin's new book, anothe

More Debunking of Bad Science from Tony Burfield of Cropwatch I've known Natural Perfumers Guild member Tony Burfield of Cropwatch for about ten years now. We "met" in online forums on aromatherapy, where we, and many others were real "safety nuts." All this precedes the recent upsurge in interest in niche perfumers creating fragrances in their (often unregulated) studios. At the time we were alarmed at the new folks flooding into the aromatherapy world, enticed with, and in love with, natural aromatics. Often they had no idea of maximum allowable usage rates and surrounding safety issues. Natural aromatics do have some risk factors, depending upon the chemical composition of the aromatic and the rate at which it is used in a blend. Some are fairly innocuous. Others can permanantly scar you with Berloque dermatitis markings, which look like dark, blotchy birthmarks. Others may cause blistering rashes, itching and lifelong sensitization. A few cause allergenic re

There are several French suppliers with pristine reputations for supplying pure and natural aromatics, and fewer still that have a history of continuous manufacturing since the 1920's. Albert Vieille is such a company, and the people that work there are a delight and also very helpful, so it is a pleasure to work with them. The Natural Perfumers Guild is pleased to welcome Albert Vieille onboard as a Supplier member, and this membership is one more step forward as we join forces with those we admire and respect in the natural aromatics field.

I completely missed these reviews when I was offline due to eye strain. Thank you Robin, the Queen of NowSmellThis for letting me know about Kevin's reviews .

The Fragrance Foundation + Mindy Green + John Steele The Natural Perfumers Guild is proud to announce the addition of three new Associates to our membership roster. Two of the new members, John Steele of Lifetree Aromatix and Mindy Green of Green Scentsations are noted aromatherapists, authors and educators. Neither has a website, so the links above are to websites that summarize their illustrious careers. Trained in aromatherapy, John has taught natural perfumery, and Mindy wrote a seminal book on Natural Perfumery . Mindy is also the Clinical Aromatherapist for the Aveda Corporation , a founding member of the American Herbalists Guild and associate editor of the American Herb Association Newsletter Their careers are devoted to natural aromatics, writing, education and promoting the industry, and we are honored to have them on board. The Fragrance Foundation is the educational arm of the international fragrance industry. The Guild, just one-and-a-half yea

Left box and bottle: Ascent Natural Perfumes Right side: Janita Haan Perfumes In August 2007 the Guild welcomed natural perfumer Rohanna Goodwin Smith of Ascent Natural Perfumes onboard as a Professional Perfumer. I noted that the similarities between her packaging, down to the size and shape of the box, the color of the box, the shape of the perfume bottles and the delicate, sophisticated style of her perfume was nearly identical to that of Janita Haan, another Guild Professional Perfumer, who joined June 2007. My photograph here does not show the color similarity so well. I think the flash brought out too much red in Janita's box, the one on the right with the larger bottle. The gold drops you see behind the bottle are from the sealing wax. When anyone joins the Guild they submit some items to me for the Guild Library, so I've seen a lot of packaging, but never anything like the similarities between these two perfumers. When Janita saw the name of Rohanna's company, her

Illustration for the article chosen for no reason other than its beauty - a bunch of blue lotus flowers. Bravo to Tony Burfield for waging a tough negotiation and getting two great copyrighted articles in this month's Cropwatch newsletter.  Downlload the .pdfs, such as the one that is a very funny speech by Kim Kleimann, President of Berje Inc. titled "What you'll never hear from your boss." Mr. Kleimann pulls no punches, but there are lots of punchlines - in the form of very comical takes on the state of the raw materials industry. No one is sacrosanct - REACH, buyers, Scandanavian dermatologists (what a back story that is to the current state of regulation!), IFRA, sellers, anybody. I like Mr. Kleimann - he's a real straight shooter. The WFFC that this speech was presented at is the Women in Fragrance and Flavor Commerce group in New Jersey. Robert Tisserand , noted aromatherapist and I'm proud to say a member of the Natural Perfumers Guild , gave a br