I remember when I became a new mum and I learnt it was a thing for people not to wear perfum to visit the new baby. It makes a lot of sense. That overwhelming scent cloud of perfume in a room, imagine what this is like for a baby. 

Exposure to perfumes can lead to migraine, asthma, skin or eye irritations but most scary of all synthetic fragrances are known carcinagens and can lead to kidney, liver and nervous system failure. And when we wear our perfum we are not just doing this to ourselves, it’s our family, friends, co-workers and lift buddies who are all inhaling your chemicals. Not so nice a smell now. 

How Change Happens

Why don’t we all just instantly swap to a natural perfum today when we all know it’s not healthy? Perfume is a emotional thing. It joggs our memory, it’s an identity. Think of Chanel No.5 and what it means to wear it. It’s who we are, or rather, who we want to be. It’s not just a synthetic scent that we need to decide to stop using, it’s the identity we create around our chosen scent. Most of us choose a scent and stick to it, this is our identity fragrance, asking us to change this scent is asking us to change who we identify with. That’s a big ask for some people.

Many years ago I changed my fragrance of choice to a natural one. It was a big ask, mainly because I had a full bottle of Narciso Rodriguez that I had just purchased! I went to a talk at a local natural toy shop from Sarah Lantz, the author of Chemical Free Kids. I walked away from that talk a different person, that day was my tipping point. Knowing the dangers of chemicals for my young toddler, how could I continue using them? From then on I did not see my Rodriguez perfume the way I did before. It wasn’t a beautiful scent, something that was part of my identity. When I would spray it on myself I was actually repulsed, I felt I was spraying a toxic chemical on myself (becuase I was) and since that day I have not sprayed a synthetic perfume on myself again. 

Searching For The One

At first I found natural fragrances were smellingl a bit too much like incense, very earthy. I wanted a natural perfume but I didn’t  want to smell like I had just left an incense shop. I stopped wearing any scent as I skipped from health food shop to health food shop trying to find a perfum. At the time, natural perfumes were not mainstream and they could be found in healthfood shops and the odd lifestyle store if you were lucky. I headed to the internet to try my luck there. 

It was a hard ask to choose a perfume without smelling it, so I did what any good aesthically driven girl does, and I chose which bottle design I liked the most! Introducing One Seed Perfumes. The first thing I noticed was their bottle was lovely and sleek. Yes I do judge a book by it’s cover! But what really drew me to them were the ingredients, the transprancy of the website and the companies values. If I was going to fall in love with a scent, I wanted to continue to wear it for years to come, this seemed like a company which was around for good. I completed their scent quiz to help me decide which scent to choose but decide to purchase a discovery set so I could experience all the frangrances. 

When they arrived, the packaging was beautiful, sleek, minimal and recyclable. I was drawn to one scent over the others so I purchased a bottle of this and I’ve been wearing Hope ever since. I love that you can work with them to create your own scent, choosing from over 50 notes to create your perfect fragrance. 

The most important thing to remember when choosing a natural perfume is to read the ingredients. More often than not a perfume is advertised as natural but on closer inspection has fragrance as a main ingredient. Fragrance is not a natural ingredient and should be avoided.

One Seed	Vanessa Megan	The Seeke
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