InvestigationIngredients essential to perfumery sometimes run out for climatic or geopolitical reasons. A nightmare for the luxury industry, which organizes virtuous sectors in order to preserve its emblematic references.
“When the building goes, everything goes”, we often hear it said in economic circles, to emphasize the driving role of construction in the growth of a country. In the world of perfume, this is another saying that is repeated over and over again: “When the patchouli goes, everything goes! » The tropical plant with its woody smell may evoke the hippies and the 1970s, for connoisseurs it has a completely different importance.
Without patchouli, no Angel, Thierry Mugler, Coco Mademoiselle, Chanel, La vie est belle, Lancôme, or Miss Dior Chérie. Without it, none of these best-sellers under the Christmas trees… Its disappearance would be a nightmare for the luxury industry (as well as for the laundry and detergent giants, because patchouli is also used in these products).
Disaster almost happened in 2008. In Indonesia, the cradle of global patchouli production, many farmers had abandoned its cultivation for lack of sufficient income. And an excess of rain almost got the better of the crops. Patchouli essential oil has experienced a shortage, and prices have soared, sometimes multiplied by ten.
A globalized sector
The industry will take two years to recover. “The surge that followed was however particularly salutary”, remembers Dominique Roques, author of Essence Gatherer (Grasset, 2021) and “sourcer” of raw materials for the Swiss company Firmenich, one of the world leaders in perfumery and flavoring ingredients.
Fortunately, the crisis was short-lived, and patchouli did not disappear from the perfumer’s palette. Nor has it been replaced by Clearwood, a substitute derived from biotechnology, created by processing cane sugar, and which Firmenich researchers had imagined in the event of a permanent shortage.
The war in Somaliland continues to impact the frankincense harvest. The embargo on Iran makes it difficult to purchase galbanum gum.
Above all, the patchouli episode of 2008 reminded the sector that, long before being produced in industrial volumes and distributed in bottles all over the world, perfume finds its source in the most traditional agriculture. “90% of the products we buy come from family farming or wild harvesting”, observes Bertrand de Préville, managing director of Naturals at Laboratoires Monique Rémy (LMR, owned by IFF, another giant in the perfume industry). Thus, if the perfumes sold in supermarkets and supermarkets are mainly made with synthetic elements, those called “premium” require more than 40% natural products.
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