IFRA UK Fragrance Forum

This year, for the second time ever, IFRA UK (formerly known as the British Fragrance Association) is hosting a Fragrance Forum at the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace, London on Thursday 18th October 2012.  I'm proud to say that Pell Wall Perfumes will be one of the sponsors of the event.

The theme for the event is 'From Flower to Shower' and it promises to be fascinating - here are some details from the IFRA press release:

The occasion will provide an opportunity to meet those from the fragrance industry including perfumers, scientists, customers and academics as well as senior personnel from other trade associations

Lisa Hipgrave, director of IFRA United Kingdom, said: “The 2012 IFRA UK Fragrance Forum is entitled ‘From Flower to Shower’ as we intend to explore the entire creative process of fragrance creation. 

“We held the first event of its kind last year and it was so over-subscribed that we decided to expand the capacity of the 2012 Fragrance Forum enabling more non-Members to obtain tickets. We now plan to stage this Fragrance Forum annually. The occasion offers not only a fascinating set of presentations but also a unique networking opportunity for delegates and speakers. It will bring together those involved in every aspect of fragrance research, creation and application”. 

And here is some more information from the Perfumer & Flavorist magazine:

Jenny Tillotson, a senior research fellow at the University of Arts London (Central Saint Martin’s) and the University of Cambridge, is scheduled to talk about her vision of: "From Flower To Shower To Empower: the Fragrant Future," which includes information about wearable technology, pioneered by a technique she calls, "Scentsory Design." 

Will Andrews, who works as a fragrance scientist within the fragrance design team at P&G’s Innovation Center, is scheduled to discuss, “Communicating scent through ‘Holistic Design,’” including successfully communicating a fragrance by connecting the story inside and outside the bottle.

Robin Clery of Givaudan plans to speak about a technique known as ‘headspace analysis’ in which allows one to capture the most elusive scents from nature and make them available for perfumery.

“Smell is a potent wizard” is the message of Tim Jacob, a professor at he School of Biosciences at Cardiff University. He will detail how scent is a response that includes emotions, memory and the endocrine system.

In addition the IFRA UK Fragrance Forum will feature an anthology of poems inspired by fragrance, called Penning Perfumes, which was organized by Odette Toilette of Scratch + Sniff and poet Claire Trévien.

You can get further details by downloading the IFRA UK Summer Newsletter or this summary from the University of Arts, London.

Blackberry Fair, Whitchurch, Saturday 6th October

This Saturday, 6th October Pell Wall Perfumes will be at the Blackberry Fair in Whitchurch.  It's a fun, family, community-based event centred around the Civic Centre and Market Hall and spilling over into the High Street, which will be closed to traffic for the occasion.

If you are anywhere nearby - and Whitchurch is easy to find from Stoke-on-Trent, Crewe, Chester and Wrexham as well as from the south along the A41 to Telford - do come along for a great family day out.

Pell Wall Perfumes will be in the Market Hall not far from the stage and the circus . . .

This is me at our stand at the Shrewsbury Flower Show 

The 26 Ingredients

Whether you look at the labels on fragrances you buy or make fragrances yourself and hope to sell them, an understanding of what is on the label and why can be useful.

Below I'm listing a lot of materials that you may see on a label.  Don't make the mistake of assuming that because these are listed they are the things that make up the fragrance though: they are a tiny subset of the materials used in manufacturing fragrances (there are between three and four thousand materials in regular use) but just 26 of them have to be declared on the label if the product is for sale in the EU.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The following list is a useful reference, it often comes up in the context of discussion about the IFRA rules, and indeed is often laid at their door: wrongly as it has nothing to do with them at all. It is the list of items required by the EU Cosmetics Directive to be listed on the label of any fragrance that contains more than 0.001% (the threshold is 0.01% of the finished product for wash-off products such as shower gel). This regulation was incorporated into UK law as part of the 2008 Cosmetics Regulations, Schedule 4 and as such has been in force for some years.

As a result of this requirement many brands required re-formulation of fragrances in order to avoid the need to put these things on the label, particularly those with long, difficult chemical names, which seem to lead certain groups of consumers to assume something is poisonous (obviously nonsense, but the power of fear is substantial).

Many of these ingredients also have IFRA restrictions on their usage, details of which are on the IFRA rules blog post.

Anyway here is the full list of what is often referred to as 'the 26 ingredients' using the nomenclature required by the EU even though in some cases that differs from usual practice even in the chemical industry, still more the fragrance industry.

Notice that the majority of these appear in nature as components of essential oils, absolutes and other extracts from plants.  I've marked with an asterisk * those that are not known in nature -  I'm not saying they don't occur in nature, just that if they do, we have not found them yet. Also notice that no animal derived ingredients are included:

Amyl cinnamal (CAS No 122-40-7)

Benzyl alcohol (CAS No 100-51-6)

Cinnamyl alcohol (CAS No 104-54-1)

Citral (CAS No 5392-40-5)

Eugenol (CAS No 97-53-0)

Hydroxy-citronellal (CAS No 107-75-5)*

Isoeugenol (CAS No 97-54-1)

Amyl cinnamyl alcohol (CAS No 101-85-9)

Benzyl salicylate (CAS No 118-58-1)

Cinnamal (CAS No 104-55-2)

Coumarin (CAS No 91-64-5)

Geraniol (CAS No 106-24-1)

Hydroxy-methylpentylcyclohexenecarboxaldehyde (CAS No 31906-04-4)*[almost universally known as Lyral]

Anisyl alcohol (CAS No 105-13-5)

Benzyl cinnamate (CAS No 103-41-3)

Farnesol (CAS No 4602-84-0)

2-(4-tert-Butylbenzyl) propionaldehyde (CAS No 80-54-6)* [commonly known as Lillial]

Linalool (CAS No 78-70-6)

Benzyl benzoate (CAS No 120-51-4)

Citronellol (CAS No 106-22-9)

Hexylcinnam-aldehyde (CAS No 101-86-0)

d-Limonene (CAS No 5989-27-5)

Methyl heptin carbonate (CAS No 111-12-6)*

3-Methyl-4-(2,6,6-tri-methyl-2-cyclohexen-1-yl)-3-buten-2-one (CAS No 127-51-5)* [commonly known as gamma methyl ionone]

Oak moss extract (CAS No 90028-68-5)

Tree moss extract (CAS No 90028-67-4)