Versatile Paris -not your typical perfume brand
Now this is exciting: You can now find the hip Versatile Paris perfumes in our stores. This is a french brand of perfume extracts, with unique scents, all genderless. The products are much more condensed than regular eau de perfume and contain no alcohol. Moreover, this perfume has its very own take on sustainability: 100% natural sounds good, but is sometimes the less sustainable option, they argue.
THE STORY
The founder of Versatile Paris is Coralie Frébourg. She was young graduate who, during the pandemic, hesitated between looking for a job or creating one.
Coralie had specialized background: graduated from the École Supérieure du Parfum in 2019 in Paris. She already had quite a lot of experience in the perfume industry. It would have been logical to continue that path, working in the luxury brand houses. But Coralie changed her mind and started to create her own brand instead.
SOURCED IN EUROPE
The 8 perfumes of Varsatile Paris are all unisex, or genderless, as Coralie likes to call them. They are all unique and escape the typical clichés of perfumes, like which scents you should use for which season, or the belief that flowery scents are for women and the green more earthy tones for men. The purpose of Versatile Paris is that you look for the right scent or scents for you, forgetting stereotypes.
All the perfumes are alcohol free, vegan and condensed. A small bottle with a tiny roll-on will be enough for a long time, equivalent to a typical larger bottle.
The perfumes are made in Grasse, and the ingredients come from Europe. For packaging the label tries to operate as minimalistic as possible, by using recycled and recyclable materials. The only plastic item is de roll-on cap and its holder.
WAIT, THE SCENTS ARE NOT 100% NATURAL?
Coralie is a believer in transparency and she is not afraid to tell the controversial truth of perfume production or safety. She claims "100% natural" is an opportunistic concept that preys on consumers' fears and lack of information.
100% natural is not in every case the most sustainable, safest or best option for perfumes. This sounds very counter-intuitive, as natural seems a logical way to produce our perfumes, or any product, if you will. Unfortunately, the production of all natural ingredients is not necessarily green, and in some cases quite the opposite.
If some new synthetic alternatives or mimics can be produced in simple and unharmful ways, locally, that can actually be more sustainable than the harvested fragrances, which demand huge amounts of raw materials, with quite a lot of water usage and CO2 emissions.
For instance, it takes nearly 300,000 individual rose petals to produce just 5 milliliters of the fragrance oil. Another example: Palo Santo doesn’t yield oil until it’s around 80 years old. If you have to cut down a decades-old tree just to extract the fragrance, it’s not exactly sustainable. And what about the carbon emissions and working conditions when sourcing materials from Indonesia, compared to local production? That's why Versatile Paris is made of natural ingredients as much as possible, and of synthetic ingredients when that is a more sustainable option.
100% natural always being sustainable is just not always true, and Coralie is opposing this simplistic view of marketing some of the beauty brands, based on myths and partial information.
THE PERFUMES
Versatile Paris has short perfume formulas (max. 47 ingredients) and is transparent over all the ingredients.
The base is a 100% natural and vegetable oil made of almond and wheat. The perfumes are made without BHT (butylated hydroxyanisole) or BHA (butylated hydroxytoluene), dyes, UV filters, additives, CMR (Carcinogenic Mutagenic Reprotoxic) substances.
As the perfumes do not contain any alcohol, they are gentle on your skin and do not make it dry.
3% TO BREAST CANCER RESEARCH
Versatile Paris has many more donates 3% of their sales to the Ruban Rose association, for research against breast cancer. It's in the name and memory of Coralie's father, professor Thierry Frébourg, who died in March 2021, and who dedicated his life to Genetics, rare diseases, cancers and who was involved for more than 15 years in breast cancer research.
Discover the brand here or in our stores!