Applying perfume often involves a ritual: “You spray it on your pulse points and wait for the alcohol to evaporate and the scent to release,” says Iranian-born fashion designer Behnaz Sarakhpour. But that delayed gratification just didn’t appeal to her. “I wanted to spray it and then instantly feel like I was sticking my nose into a flower.”
Unable to find a direct-from-the-earth scent that gave her instant gratification, Sarafpour decided to make her own. Last winter, she introduced two natural perfumes, Pure Rose ($85) and Pure Neroli ($85), made with just fresh flower essences and distilled water. They’re free of alcohol, preservatives and synthetics, and, as Sarafpour puts it, “smell more like real flowers than perfume.”
Water-based scents are unusual in the fragrance world. Made up mostly of plant oils, essences, and reduced natural ingredients rather than artificial additives or lab-created complexes, these low-concentration formulas can be extremely difficult to create. “Water is a very difficult base to use,” says perfumer Christopher Brosius, who uses oil and water, two ingredients that “don’t mix easily,” in his CB I Hate Perfume line. “It takes very careful preparation and chemical reactions to get fragrance oils to float on water and stay that way.” But the benefits, according to Brosius, are that the final blend “feels much better on the skin, and the scent smells the way I intended it to smell right from the moment it leaves the bottle.”
That authenticity appeals to scent purists, like Tank magazine editor Carolina Issa, who wears Benaz Pure Rose and says it smells like “a basket of rose petals in a market in Tehran.” Meanwhile, actress Selma Blair appreciates that the lack of alcohol, which can irritate and dry out the skin, means she can spritz it more freely. “I use Benaz Pure Neroli on everything,” she says, “on my hair after a shower, on my dog before I kiss him, on my son’s pillow before he goes to bed.” The scent is “never too strong or perfume-like,” so it’s impossible to overdo it, she says.
Some people find that a subtle scent can lighten their mood. “I’m very sensitive to scents because they can make me feel differently,” says fashion designer Gabriela Hearst, who swears by Officine Universelle Buly’s Eau Triple Mexican Tuberose (130 euros, about $153), a water-based blend of tuberose, vanilla, and clove. “I’ll give it a spritz after my early morning shower and it instantly lifts my mood.”
While subtle fragrances like these might be perfect for summer, when you don’t want too much scent on your skin, Sarafpour finds that many of her clients wear her floral blends year-round: “It’s like picking up a rose and smelling it,” she says of their appeal, which she calls “seasonal.”
