Natural Perfumers Featured in the NYTimes

"The desire to smell good — without the aura of chemicals — did not seem to wane in the flop sweat of the recent economic panic. Ms. McCoy sells her creations at $60 to $125 for a half-ounce — not cheap. Yet “since 2007, I’d say my sales have increased 25 percent every year,” she said. The great majority of these perfumers buy all their ingredients from natural scent companies, in stores or on the Web, and then blend them at home. But Ms. McCoy also uses a heady variety of homegrown scents from her lush garden in Miami Shores, Fla., a village just north of Miami. Mandy Aftel, who helped spur the modern natural perfumery movement with her 2001 book “Essence and Alchemy,” said she has “observed an absolute explosion of interest.”

In a very interesting article chronicling the rise of all-naturals perfumery that relies on small batches of harvests and growing one's own plants for tincturing, appearing in the New York Times online by Micheal Tortorello, we come across names which have occupied these pages before, namely Anya McCoy and Mandy Aftel, gurus of natural perfumery. The article named "Making Flowers into Perfume" can be accessed here and contains such priceless imagery as comparing overflowing, lush jasmine vines at McCoy's "like chest hair on a ’70s sex symbol that cannot be kept under the collar".
Congrats to the natural perfumers mentioned and a shout-out for Mandy and Anya, well-done ladies!