Sustainability is a huge buzzword within the fragrance world at the moment, with customers demanding a more eco-conscious ethic to their beauty choices and some fragrance houses making sure they look after the raw materials so precious to their perfume formulas, while also ensuring a social responsibilty toward the communities of inigenous peoples who cultivate and harvest the crops.
Clean Reserve are one such responsibly-sourcing house, though striving for complete sustainability in the future; wherever possible they select raw ingredients cultivated and harvested using environmentally sound practices.
You may know them from previously having tried the original Clean range of scents and harmonious lifestyle products – and with a far more niche-inspired selection, they’re now in store and exclusive in the UK to Space NK. Having attended the press launch, we were fascinated to learn more about this collaboration with three of the world’s top fragrance houses. So, how do Clean Reserve introduce themselves…?
We’re making a choice:
To change the way you experience fragrance.
To create a collection that highlights your individuality.
To tap into our perfumers’ reserve of raw ingredients.
To actively engage in eco-conscious sustainability.
To remove the clutter, heaviness and complexity –
so all you’re left with is CLEAN.
From the wooden caps sourced in Spain from certified sustainably managed forests, the fragrances themselves use ECOCERT materials and are manufactured in a facility using 100% solar energy. The alcohol is derived from corn – even the cellophane wrapping of the boxes is made from corn! – and the scent is incorporated with aloe for added calming and softening benefits on the skin. Of course, being super-sustainable is all very well, – and especially significant on World Earth Day – but how do they actually smell…?
A gentle balance of sophisticated and sexy, this is not your average ‘dusty’ smelling oppulent rose – it’s sparkling with aldehydes (those bubbly ‘Champagne’-esque notes that add space and volume to a fragrance) and transparent in character. Touches of peony and jasmine with the tender rose petals seem to glisten with dew drops, freshly picked from the garden.
Clean Reserve Blonde Rose £79 for 100ml eau de parfum
Incense and oudh are notes that many seem to shy away from, known for their sometimes overwhelming natures, but you definitely need not fear being smothered by this blend. Fusing incense oil with blue cypress, birch wood, pimento and honeysuckle, further freshness wafts across from jasmine and magnolia, resinously clear fir balsam and the intriguing sarcocaulon mossamedens (‘Bushman’s Candle’). Warm and earthy, the fluffy musk base of suede, patchouli, praline and amber snuggles on the skin.
Clean Reserve Sueded Oud £79 for 100ml eau de parfum
An exploration of the polarity between warmth and cold, the opening is exhilarating with verbena, bamboo leaf, bergamot and juicy quince pear blending seamlessly into a heart of pure, dry cedar wrapped in cotton, peony and wild moss. Fuzzy musks balance the base with gold amber, cool vetiver and myrrh – a mineralic iciness keeping the base notes from ever being muddy, it’s the inviting earthiness of an untouched forest to get lost in.
Clean Reserve Smoked Vetiver £79 for 100ml eau de parfum
All the Clean Reserve fragrances are made especially to be linear in character – and therefore perfect to blend with each other without the notes fighting or becomming too complex and overbearing.
We had a go at layering the three outlined above, and found it immediately became a completely new smell – harmonising notes from all, but transforming into a bespoke scent with a personality all of its own. Suddenly, the dry grassiness of the vetiver was amplified and the soft suede became deeper, more woody – all buoyed by wisps of a white bouquet peeking through the forest clearing. As Sueded Oud and Blonde Rose are recommended as the perfect ‘his and hers’ fragrances for a wedding day – we think we may have introduced a new partner to this marriage and created a menage a trois!
Clean Reserve have the distinction of being the first fragrance brand to reach the finalists of the US CEW Eco Awards this year, with the winners being announced in a couple of weeks time. With five fragrances in the collection at Space NK, you’re bound to find your own favourite combination, so why not go and explore?
Written by Suzy Nightingale
