Brook Harvey-Taylor is arguably the godmother of “clean” beauty, the movement to provide products made without ingredients shown or suspected to be harmful to human health and the planet.

Launching Pacifica as vegan and cruelty-free 27 years ago in 1996, she was ahead of the industry. Before expanding across categories as we all know the brand today — in skincare, makeup, hair care and body — her first-ever launch was in fragrance. Now, the wonder founder is introducing a latest line of scents.

“Fragrance is in our DNA,” she said of the perfumes, that are plant-based and functional — the term used for the sensorial experience related to smell.

“Functional fragrance for me is that we’re using a cloth that’s designed to elicit mood or an experience or positive impact,” said Harvey-Taylor. “It’s specific material that has the same impact on many individuals.”

For example, one might smell orange and picture, “It’s vibrant,” she went on, “while one other thinks, ‘It wakes me up.’ But [it’s] having the same experience with orange. That’s the commonality in aromatherapy, nevertheless it’s also something that we all know in scent works.”

She was inspired to dive back into fragrance after losing her sense of smell for a yr as a consequence of COVID-19, she explained. She’s been retraining her brain around scents. “It’s waking up your mind and that’s from the aromatherapy perspective. But it surely’s also digging into the science and data.”  

She’s bringing back “cult favorites,” with each perfume priced at $27 and created with latest blends (with the assistance of a perfumer based in Florida). Including hair and body mists at $13 each, there are seven perfumes in total including “Montana Sky,” using cedarwood, elderflower and sage; “Beach Day,” with sandalwood, orange flower, and smoke notes, and “Passion Fruit,” with passion fruit, pineapple and vanilla. All use natural grain alcohol, pure alcohol comprised of fermented grains. They launch in any respect retailers on Sunday, with a TikTok Shop exclusive on Friday.

Each is now offered in 2 oz. bottles as an alternative of the previous 1 oz. containers (which were sold for $22). “You’re getting an enormous value increase…I’m all the time about accessibility in creating and putting one of the best product for the smallest amount out into the world. And ensuring we’re meeting more individuals with our product.”

She also updated the packaging: “We molded our own bottles, because I need to make certain that we will screw the cap off in order that the bottle is recyclable. So, that was really vital to me will not be to have a crimp cap. After which for the primary time we actually are using a cap on our perfumes only for a bit of bit more of a prestige feel.”

Pacifica’s fragrance business is predicted to grow roughly 40 percent in the subsequent two years, in keeping with industry sources, reaching roughly $30 million in sales in coming years. Representing a gentle 5 to 10 percent of overall brand sales for years, last yr it grew 50 percent, year-over-year.

Some may not know that Harvey-Taylor’s roots are in aromatherapy. Now based in Santa Barbara County in Southern California, she was living in Portland, Ore., when she created Pacifica. It was reading “Jitterbug Perfume” by Tom Robbins that led her down her path, initially inspired to start out an apprenticeship with an aromatherapist.

“I became really obsessive about essential oils and mixing,” she said. “I might start mixing perfumes, and when she left the country — she was English — she gifted me her entire library, and so I had this quick lab, and I began to create perfumes.”

Harvey-Taylor’s first fragrance was sold at a Grateful Dead show in Eugene, Ore.

“My childhood experience, my childhood were really an element of this brand,” she said of growing up in Montana, where she lived on a cattle ranch.

“Once I put together what I called ‘eating our pets,’ is after I became vegan and really militant about animal rights,” she went on. “It wasn’t a trend, so for me, it was all the time vital that Pacifica was one hundred pc vegan and cruelty-free, and we definitely got down to disrupt something.”

In the wonder industry, she wasn’t seeing “a brand that was living its values the way in which that I wanted a brand to live its values,” she added. (Pacifica has a partnership with Plastic Collective, supporting the Asase Foundation in Ghana to gather and recycle plastics akin to the whole amount of plastic utilized in Pacifica products.)

“For me, it’s all the time been really vital as a changemaker in beauty that beauty isn’t defined by what white, hetero, patriarchal masculinity defines as beautiful. It must be more that unstructured freedom, joy and celebration that’s transformative and what it means to every individual,” she continued.

Looking ahead, Harvey-Taylor is working on “skincare innovations,” she revealed, which is able to launch at Ulta Beauty in the autumn. “A number of what we’re doing immediately goes back to our roots, whether it’s in aromatherapy or how we originally launched our skincare around these very experiential ingredients and textures and fascinated by skincare in a singular way.”