Is wearing perfume harmful?

A customer messaged me today telling me that at the end of a flight from Christchurch the person sitting beside her asked her what perfume she was wearing because she smelt lovely. She was not wearing perfume, but she was wearing Agnes & Me Super Hydrating Face Cream. That made me so happy, on three counts: that my products smell so good she got a compliment, that she was able to give the elevator pitch on Agnes & Me to a new person and that she was not wearing perfume. A woman after my own heart because I stopped using it years ago.

I don’t talk about nasty chemicals much as I don’t like that whole fear mongering in the green beauty arena, but perfume is another matter.  A single perfume can have 50-300 different chemicals, I kid you not! By law a company can hide many ingredients under the banner of fragrance because it’s a “trade secret” and of course all perfumes are proprietary. If a label says "parfum" or "fragrance" no one but the maker knows what's in there.

So, if you want to avoid exposure to so many unnecessary, unknown chemicals while nourishing your skin, look better and smell fabulous enough that strangers ask you what you’re wearing try my Face Cream. It smells lovely because there are two essential oils in there — New Zealand Lavender and Geranium — but together they come to less than .5% of the formula and they are listed clearly on the label, like all my products.

So many of my customers tell me they want to avoid chemicals which in reality is impossible because everything is is a chemical, including water, but what you can do is avoid using too many. So, look at the label and if there are many lines of ingredients or "parfum" or "fragrance" is listed, maybe rethink. Perfume is a good place to start.