Although many of us in the global  fragrance community have been writing about the resurgence of Natural Perfumery as Art for nearly a decade, it is now a  'growing'  trend that has reached mainstream media.

As our lives have been taken over by increasing isolation, technology (there have been more technologic advances over the the past  five years than in the past 5000), and products are mass produced without soul nor passion, the artisnal movement  has been gaining momentum since the year 2000. It will not slow down, that I assure you. To refuse to acknowledge it is burying your head in the sand. -MC 

 

 "….Anya McCoy, 59, sells her original scents under the name Anya’s Garden (anyasgarden.com), and runs a Yahoo group devoted to natural perfuming. The subscription list has more than tripled since 2005, Ms. McCoy said, and currently numbers almost 2,000 members.

The great majority of these perfumers buy all their ingredients from natural scent companies, in stores or on the Web, and then blend them at home. But Ms. McCoy also uses a heady variety of homegrown scents from her lush garden in Miami Shores, Fla., a village just north of Miami.

The desire to smell good — without the aura of chemicals — did not seem to wane in the flop sweat of the recent economic panic. Ms. McCoy sells her creations at $60 to $125 for a half-ounce — not cheap. Yet “since 2007, I’d say my sales have increased 25 percent every year,” she said.

 

Mandy Aftel, who helped spur the modern natural perfumery movement with her 2001 book “Essence and Alchemy,” said she has “observed an absolute explosion of interest.”

“I’m an artisan, though,” she added, referring to her perfume line, Aftelier. “So an explosion for me isn’t like an explosion for Macy’s!”

Ms. Aftel, 62, connects the popularity of natural perfumes to interest in organic gardening and  local food. “People are so often in front of their computer screens and detached from the sensual world,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/garden/10perfume.html?pagewanted=1

 

Editor's note: This excerpt appeared in the New York Times , June 9th, 2010  and was from an article written by Michael Tortorello, entitled  Making Flowers into Perfume.