11 beautiful perfumes made from essential oils

Essential oils are at the heart of most modern perfumes. These concentrations (often obtained by distillation) offer a subtle embodiment (or essence) of a plant’s aroma and give your favorite perfumes natural notes. “Katharine Hepburn was once quoted about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers saying, ‘He gives her lessons and she gives him sex appeal.’ The dance between naturals and synthetics in perfumery is quite the same: one without the other leaves a flat, coarse scent, without movement or vitality,” explains Stephen Nilsen, vice president of perfumery at Givaudan. Basically, although essential oils can technically stand alone, a mixture of these natural and artificial elements makes the best scents. “Essential oils capture the unfiltered beauty of nature but lack the performance, purity and refinement of synthetic materials,” says Nilsen, noting that essential oils are found in virtually all perfumes.

“The great thing about essential oils is that each one has its own scent, natural scents with multiple facets,” explains Clément Gavarry, fine perfume perfumer at Firmenich, one of the perfume houses that helped create Bella Hadid’s buzzy new perfume. line, Ôrəbella. “Working with these formulas is refreshing, in the sense that they respect the natural scents of natural raw materials, so they stay true to their roots.” Essential oils also have welcome social benefits, such as nourishing the skin, improving mood, and more. “That’s what I love about working with them: they have aromatherapeutic benefits that relate to your emotions and can have a positive impact on how you feel, from relaxed to energetic,” says Gavarry .

Of course, these oils are not without their challenges. “They are generally more expensive than synthetics and don’t offer the olfactory uniqueness and long-lasting quality that people expect from contemporary perfumes,” Nilsen says of essential oils. “Additionally, as a natural product, they have the disadvantages associated with most crops, such as year-to-year and batch-to-batch variation, as well as the challenge of quantity of land necessary for cultivation.” But essential oils are, well, essential to the majority of your favorite perfumes and your general perfume knowledge. As for some expert-approved scent favorites? “Asking a perfumer for their favorite perfume or raw material is like asking a grandparent for their favorite grandchild!” Nilsen said. However, he admits that rose and citrus essential oils are ubiquitous in high-end perfumes. Read on to discover some of our favorite scents formulated with essential oils.