We’re here to help. Some of our most frequently asked Fragrance questions are below:
It’s normal to become accustomed to the smell of a fragrance. After you've smelt a fragrance for a while, your brain can ‘turn off’ to it - this is something we struggle with on a daily basis during fragrance development. This can often lead to the thought that a fragrance has disappeared when, in fact, it hasn’t. A very simple way to counter this is to rotate your fragrances on a day-to-day basis.
We focus very hard on longevity every season - we try to develop fragrances that last all day for most wearers. That said, natural perfumes can vary a lot from person to person, and different skin types and body temperatures can affect longevity in particular. There are some things you can try to help increase longevity, should you find your fragrance wearing off too soon:
Apply away from the face: When applied to the neck / collar, one can very quickly adjust to the smell of a fragrance, and stop noticing it (this effect can vary with the fragrance). Applying to the lower arms and back of the neck instead can help.
Hold the sprayer close: A 5cm gap between your skin and the perfume pump leaves a concentrated circle of fragrance on the skin - the concentration helps the fragrance last longer & ensures that a higher proportion of the spray is actually applied to the skin, and not lost to the air.
Apply to cold spots: Applying the perfume to cooler points on the skin, rather than to hot points, reduces the rate of evaporation and helps the perfume to last longer. For example, apply to top of wrists, not underside of wrists, which are hot points, and tend to evaporate the perfume more quickly than elsewhere)
Apply to clothing: Perfume applied to clothing rather than to skin sits at a lower temperature, and therefore evaporates less quickly. This also means that the fragrance can be removed with ease, should you wish. The counterpoint is that the sillage - or power - of the fragrance is reduced. Less heat means a slower evaporation time and therefore reduces the power of the scent.
Still not lasting long enough? Let us know so we can work on this for next season: help@ffern.co
At Ffern, we prioritise creating fragrances that meet stringent organic standards.
While we don't have certification at this time due to the fast seasonal turnaround and limited production runs of our fragrances, we are actively exploring solutions and hope to achieve certification in the near future. Rest assured, we will continue to uphold our promise of delivering exceptional fragrances that meet the highest organic standards.
You can find more information on our ingredient policy here.
The big difference between natural fragrance and artificial fragrance is complexity. Most artificial fragrance ingredients are made up of single molecules, whereas our natural ingredients are composed of up to 200 molecules each. As a result, the scope for intermolecular interaction is far greater with a natural fragrance.
Ffern fragrances, which are made with natural ingredients, have a tendency to evolve over time. We think this is something to be embraced - and so we don't prescribe storage conditions for Ffern fragrance. That said, in general, the more light, temperature fluctuation and heat a fragrance is exposed to, the faster the rate of evolution.
So - if you’re open to experimentation, then feel free to leave your bottle on the window sill (you'll likely see some colour changes too) - but if you're all about consistency, try to store it somewhere cool and dark, like our carry case!
Yes.
Ffern was founded on the principle of restoring the forgotten craft of natural perfumery - celebrating the beautiful subtleties and quirks of plant-derived ingredients, and connecting our wearers to nature
Today, perfume’s artisan past has been largely forgotten. The industry is dominated by a handful of cosmetics giants who own multiple brands, and mass manufacture their fragrances on a global scale. Carefully sourced natural ingredients and independent artistic expression have been abandoned in favour of cheap chemicals and ever-changing market forces.
Natural fragrances help us connect to the natural world and to our memories. The idea behind Ffern has always been to celebrate artisan techniques, disrupting the highly commercial landscape of fragrance, and bringing our community closer to the natural world and the seasons around us.
We publish and maintain a framework for what we think constitutes responsible natural perfume making in the 21st century at ffern.co/natural. All Ffern fragrances are made in accordance with this framework. Our ambition is to evolve these principles into a general standard that might one day be adopted by other enthusiasts, makers, and natural perfumery practitioners, helping to provide clarity around the otherwise vaguely defined term ‘natural perfume’.
At Ffern, we are committed to using 95-100% natural ingredients in all of our fragrances.
We do make an allowance for up to 5% harmonising molecules from a carefully researched list. These lab-derived harmonising molecules don’t carry a strong scent themselves - rather they serve to brighten, space-out and strengthen the natural notes.
The remainder of the fragrance is made up of quintuple-distilled organic Italian grain alcohol, purified water, and in some cases orange flower water or other natural waters - these are byproducts of the oil extraction process used to add character and reduce waste.
To learn more about our approach to natural perfume making you can read our natural perfumery framework here. This document outlines our precise approach to responsible natural perfume making in the 21st century. Our ambition is to evolve these principles into a general standard that might one day be adopted by other enthusiasts, makers, and natural perfumery practitioners.
All our fragrances are gender-neutral. They are designed to be worn by anyone and everyone.
Beyond developing gender neutral fragrances, the complexity of the natural ingredients we use means that our fragrances will evolve with every person that uses them, so you may well find the scent smells rather differently on each person who wears it.
Every seasonal Ffern perfume ships with a sample vial set, boxed separately from the main bottle, which is sealed. This is in place to allow you to try the fragrance before deciding whether or not you'd like to break the seal and keep it. We do not, unfortunately, bottle any samples to ship out separately.
The only other way to try our fragrances, is by popping into our newly opened shop in Soho, London, where the team will be more than happy to walk you through our archive of available fragrances.
All of our fragrances are indeed 100% vegan and free from any form of animal cruelty or testing.
As seasonal fragrance makers, everything we do is very closely aligned with the seasons. The plants change with the seasons, fashions change, light changes - and we think fragrance should change too.
Each release is designed to reflect the natural world during its corresponding season - hence the Equinox and the Solstice, points of transition between the seasons, make for perfect launch dates.
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?
We do our best to ensure that Ffern fragrances are completely safe for everyone, pregnant or otherwise.
We only choose the finest natural, organic, and sustainably sourced ingredients. Part of this process is carefully considering the safety implications of each ingredient before including it in a fragrance.
We are aware that there are concerns around the use of phthalates in fragrances, and whether those who are pregnant should avoid them. While this remains an open question, we can guarantee that Ffern fragrances are and always will be completely phthalate-free.
Ffern is a natural perfume maker. Everything about our fragrance-making process serves a single end: To connect our wearers to nature through perfume.
From the ingredient growing, harvest, extraction and fragrance development through to the blending and barrel ageing, we try to act as responsible custodians of these incredible natural resources.
Our approach has been described as that of a fine wine maker, rather than of a beauty company.
This is reflected in our ledger model - rather than bulk manufacturing perfume and shipping it worldwide to be sold in airports and department stores year after year, our fragrances are small batch, and limited edition by their very nature.
Our ingredients change from year to year and harvest to harvest. To try and recreate the same scent repeatedly would be incredibly difficult and belie the ever-evolving nature of our ingredients.
With that in mind, our fragrances change with the seasons. We never sit still, and we never make the same thing twice. We ask our wearers to embrace this evolution, and we hope that it might encourage them to pay more attention to the natural world along the way.
The vast majority of available perfumes may be considered ‘synthetic fragrances’. Perfumes made entirely or primarily with synthetic ingredients. These ingredients are favoured by perfume makers worldwide for three reasons: They’re cheap, they’re identical every time, and they’re easy to work with.
At Ffern, we exclusively make natural perfumes; fragrances comprised of natural ingredients whose ultimate purpose is to capture the immense complexity and beauty of the natural world, and connect the wearer to nature.
Synthetic fragrance ingredients are single-molecule chemicals created in a lab, whereas natural fragrance ingredients are blends of up to 500 molecules, and will vary depending on the growing conditions, the harvest timings and the specific chemotypes of the ingredient - no two sources of a given natural ingredient are the same.
If you combine ten synthetics into a fragrance, you have just ten different molecules - if you combine multiple natural oils into a fragrance (we use upwards of twenty in some of our work), then the molecular complexity of the final mixture is orders of magnitude higher - there can be many thousands of different molecules in the fragrance.
This immense molecular complexity is the source of the beauty of natural fragrance-making.
It enables the constant evolution of natural fragrances - the high molecule count allows for much more molecular interaction, and as a result the fragrances evolve in the barrel, in the bottle, and on the skin. In this sense, they are very much alive.
The molecular complexity also enables spectacular depth - when a natural fragrance reaches your nose, your olfactory neurons bind with the constituent molecules and send signals to your brain. With a natural fragrance, this is happening with all of the different molecules at once, so the complexity of the smell, its ability to trigger memories, and its potential for nuance is greatly increased.
No, and we never will.