When browsing skincare products there’s no doubt you’ll come across various words that describe fragrances used within the formula, but what do they mean exactly? Selecting a product that suits your personal criteria is essential. That’s why understanding the difference between phrases like natural fragrance, perfume, and fragrance-free is an important part of the shopping experience.

We live in an industry where so much is “off the shelf,” white-label repurposed products that marketers whip into something special. In many cases, brands don’t need to share what goes into their fragranced products which is often a mixture of synthetic chemicals, such as petroleum and phthalates. If you’re shopping for natural products, this is a really important factor to consider but one that’s often missed and misleading.

Nothing was off the shelf when it came to one of Corpus’s most distinctive attributes. It was no easy feat to create a natural fragrance that meets the expectations of fine fragrance but that’s what sets Corpus apart from other brands.

Natural perfumery could be compared to the modern vegan chef who transforms the constraints on ingredients into convincing and satisfying substitutes. Only with a great amount of research, development, creativity and experience can you compete with the expectations set by conventional chemistry.

Creating a clean and effective natural deodorant using delicate notes that mimic more of an artisanal fragrance than traditional artificial scents isn’t easy, but Corpus Naturals was able to harness these unique and synthetic-free fragrances without compromising quality and sophistication.

Our natural fragrance is built with the traditional fragrance architecture of a base, middle and top note. The fragrances we have come to love over the years are chalked full of synthetic compounds that give them a burst of top notes and a musky base. The traditional Musk and Aldehyde notes that are used in perfumery are currently only available in synthetic forms – properties we do not use when creating natural deodorant.

This presented a major challenge, but we pushed our chemist to go above and beyond and stretch the possibilities -- despite the limited palette of natural notes at our disposal.

Natural fragrances start with essential oils. In addition to essential oils, natural fragrances use oleoresins, distillates, fractions, concretes, absolutes, and extracts.

Aromatic components – the scent of floral and fresh rose petals, for example – are broken down into odor molecules through various extraction processes. Essentially, this isolates various aromatic molecules that are then used to contrast or complement other notes to create a unique fragrance blend like those found in Corpus Naturals deodorants.

All of these materials are extracted directly from the plant source, but each plant releases its fragrance materials differently. For instance, rosemary essential oil can easily be extracted from a plant through steam distillation, but true vanilla comes only in an absolute – in other words, extracted with a solvent.

Through the extraction and blending process, Corpus Naturals created an assortment of luxurious fragrances – notes of cardamom, pink lemon, rose and violet – that elevates the experience of using natural deodorant simply because you need it and transforming it into something you take pleasure in using within a daily routine.

Corpus has refined and redesigned what a natural formula can be. The result are products that go above and beyond what you may have come to expect from "natural".