Broadly, perfume making can be divided into two categories. Natural perfume making, and synthetic perfume making.

At its highest level, natural perfume making is about making perfumes with natural ingredients that reflect the olfactive beauty of the natural world. Synthetic perfume making is about reliably producing large amounts of ‘commercial’ perfume with high levels of consistency, and in some cases experimenting with novel chemical smells that don’t exist in nature at all.

At Ffern, we are wholeheartedly committed to natural perfumery. For us, perfume has no greater purpose than to connect its wearer to nature.

A challenge that we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about is the looseness of the term ‘natural perfumery’.

There is no strict or legal definition of ‘natural perfumery’, and no restrictions around the use of the term ‘natural’. Our response has been to develop a framework for what we think constitutes responsible natural perfume making in the 21st century. You can read about this here. Our ambition is to evolve these principles into a general standard for natural perfumery that might one day be adopted by other enthusiasts, makers, and natural perfumery practitioners.

In our view, for a perfume to be considered ‘natural’, it should be compliant with the Ffern natural perfumery framework. In summary, this means 95-100% natural ingredients, zero synthetic character, and sourcing that respects nature - organic where possible, extracted at source where possible, considered farming practices throughout.

Unfortunately, these principles are generally ignored by the industry at large. Fragrance makers find it hard to resist the allure of synthetic ingredients. They’re cheap, stable, powerful and very simple to work with. By contrast, naturals are expensive, evolve from harvest-to-harvest, and deeply complex, making them much harder to work with.

These may sound like serious challenges, but for us the higher emotional and financial cost of natural perfume making is absolutely worth it.

To understand why, head to our FAQ: What’s the difference between synthetic and natural perfumes?