Meet the ingredients: what's the deal with perfume?

The history of perfume

In short: perfume exists for about 5000 years and it comes from Egypt. Around 3000 years before common era the Egyptians burned all sorts of herbs and plants as an offering to their gods. You can imagine this created a great smell, and so a first form of perfume was born. The name perfume also comes from the Latin word per fumus, which means: 'through smoke'. Perfume always stayed important within the Egyptian culture and took other forms like oil, cream and powder later on.

In the first century of our common era the Syrians were the first ones to invent glass blowing. With this invention a fluid perfume was created, which was more valuable than jewels.

Natural ingredients

All this time, perfume was created with natural ingredients. But from the 19th century people started experimenting in laboratories. More knowledge on chemistry lead to the creation of synthetic ingredients. The result? A synthetic perfume!

Just a smell

Basically, perfume is nothing more than a smell. And that smell can be made in different ways. Natural fragrances come from, as the name already suggests, nature. This can be plant or animal based. An example are essential oils. These often do contain allergens though. 

Synthetic parfume

Synthetic fragrances are made in a lab. That makes it possible to develop a perfume without allergens, but it's not necessary. At Naïf we have chosen to use a synthetic perfume, so we are sure that 26 of the most common allergens are not in it. This reduces the chances on skin irritation!

Perfume free

And then there are also products that are perfume free or contain 0% perfume. There is no natural, but also no synthetic perfume added to these products. It doesn't always mean that these products have no smell at all, as the other ingredients in the cream, gel or lotion can bring a smell. But these ingredients are not purposely added for their smell, they have a different function. Examples of products with 0% added perfume are our wipes an zinc cream. Because you don't need the smell of roses for your baby's nutt, you just want it to be clean and taken care of.