Inspired by nature’s alchemy, Abel fragrances are powerful, natural and beautiful
- Who is it? Abel, a natural fragrance brand that uses upcycled ingredients and eschews petrochemicals
- Why do I want it? Each delicious formula lasts for hours without overwhelming the senses
- Where can I find it? On the Abel website
Who is it? Frances Shoemack grew up in the “middle of nowhere”, with a “hippie dippy” yogi mum and a farm (with all its animals and chaos) to call home. When she talks to us, it’s late night on a Friday in New Zealand – where she's always lived, save for a stint in Amsterdam; the kids are in bed, and she’s a glass of wine down. This sums up Abel as a brand: approachable, fun and never stuffy. But that’s not to say it’s unsophisticated – quite the opposite, in fact. Abel is alluring, with its delicious branding and unconventional, innovative scents that scratch an itch.
“I grew up attuned to the rhythms of nature,” Shoemack recalls. “I feel super grateful to my mother – she grew everything that we ate.” Farm life aside, she worked with the land as an oenologist long before beginning her own fragrance brand. “It wasn’t like I suddenly discovered clean beauty and wanted to change my life – [sustainability] has always been a part of me.” But while she ate organic produce and opted for natural skincare formulas, she struggled to find sustainable fragrances that felt cool and matched her lifestyle. “I’d walk into a beautiful perfumery or department store and ask for a natural perfume, and they’d tell me to go to the supermarket.”
Dowdy brown packaging peppered with Papyrus lettering alongside her weekly food shop was not how Shoemack envisioned her perfect scent. And so, on the smell of an oily rag (which Shoemack translates from Kiwi slang as ‘the bare minimum’), she created Abel. “I was working full time and doing it off my savings,” she explains. “I didn’t have any experience in the industry.” It was a clear case of trial and error, making mistakes along the way until she realised: “Holy shit, if I was starting now, I would do it so much better.”
This month, Abel begins anew. “We’ve redesigned and totally isolated our supply chain to within three to 400 kilometres of our production house in Holland,” Shoemack proudly explains. “With the boxes, we’ve reduced our carbon footprint by 96%.” It’s not all about the logistics though, it’s about the perfumes themselves, and making sure they perform in a saturated market: “People kept saying to me: ‘It lasts really well for a natural perfume,’ and I was like, ‘Fuck! That’s not what we’re here for.‘ We can deliver against anything – not just against natural perfumes.”
Why do I want it? Abel’s olfactory arsenal eschews “the crazy big elevator perfumes that you can smell across the room, because I think that’s gross,” says Shoemack. Rather, Abel’s scents are “high performance and low impact”. They’re beautiful, functional and meant to stir emotions.
Nurture – a milky juice of orange blossom, rose, ginger and sandalwood – was created to feel like a mother’s hug. Meanwhile, Laundry Day smells like freshly cut grass, sharp aldehydes and juicy bergamot with hints of vetiver. “It captures that optimism of the first day of spring,” says Shoemack, admitting that it’s her favourite. “The optimism of the fragrance gets me. It’s this kind of joy – like anything’s possible.”
Another scent, Cyan Nori, features notes of white peach, tangerine and musk, and is made to smell like an orange sunset above a salty coastline. “I just wanted to capture the ocean in a fragrance,” Shoemack says. “We lived in this crazy house on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean, and the ocean became a part of my identity.” The scent itself is “a bit weird”, with a briny seaweed absolute, but it’s the perfect example of how Abel likes to formulate: with a personal touch, and in spite of what’s popular in the zeitgeist.
This audacity to be unique spills into their innovative recipes, which use upcycled ingredients from the food industry as well as lab-grown natural ingredients to reduce the brand’s climate impact. “We use a cherry note that comes from wastewater during processing for the food industry,” Shoemack notes. The beauty of this is that it smells fresher and juicier than cherry essential oils. “Synthetic cherry smells like candy, but this is tart and fresh.” Shoemack is a self-professed “ingredients geek”, always pushing her formulas without petrochemicals or using anything from fossil fuel supply chains.
Yet, if you didn’t know about their planet-friendly endeavours, you’d never know. You don’t buy Abel fragrances just because they’re good for the planet – you buy them because they smell incredible. Whatever your perfume preferences – whether clean, musky, sweet or peppery – you’ll find something from Abel that smells simultaneously new, unexpected, and like it was made just for you.
Where can I find it? On the Abel website now.
