If you've spent any time looking at scented body or hair products, you've probably noticed that some list "essential oils" in their ingredients while others simply say "fragrance" or "parfum." The two words get used interchangeably in marketing, but they are not the same thing, and the difference matters more than most brands will tell you.
At Eartha, we use only pure essential oils across all our products. That's a deliberate choice that costs us more to formulate and limits what scents we can offer. Here's why we made it, and why we think it's worth understanding before you choose what goes on your skin.
Where the scent comes from
Essential oils are extracted directly from plant material, whether flowers, leaves, bark, seeds, or roots, through steam distillation or cold pressing. The result is a concentrated liquid that carries the plant's natural aromatic compounds exactly as nature produced them.
Fragrance oils are different. They are either fully synthetic, created in a laboratory from aroma chemicals, or a blend of natural and synthetic ingredients designed to mimic a natural scent. They can be made to smell like almost anything, including scents that don't exist in nature. An "ocean breeze" or "fresh linen" fragrance oil is entirely manufactured.
Neither is inherently fraudulent. Fragrance oils are used widely across the beauty and home industry. But the distinction matters when you're choosing what to put on your body.
What they do beyond the scent
This is where the difference becomes significant.
Essential oils contain the naturally occurring compounds of the plant they come from. These compounds, terpenes, esters, alcohols, and others, are what give essential oils their therapeutic properties. Lavender is calming because of its linalool content. Eucalyptus is clarifying because of cineole. Bergamot lifts mood through its unique ester profile. The scent and the effect are inseparable because they come from the same source.
Fragrance oils are designed to smell pleasant. They do that well. But because they are built from synthetic aroma chemicals rather than whole plant compounds, they do not carry the same therapeutic properties. A fragrance oil that smells like lavender will not have the same effect on your nervous system as true lavender essential oil. The scent is a copy. The benefit is not transferred.
In Singapore's climate, there is an additional consideration. Synthetic fragrance is one of the most common causes of skin sensitivity and irritation, particularly in heat. When the skin is warm and pores are open, which in Singapore is most of the time, synthetic fragrance chemicals absorb more readily and can cause reactions that wouldn't occur in a cooler climate. People who find heavily scented products irritating in Singapore are often reacting to synthetic fragrance rather than to scent itself.
A note on ingredient labelling
You may notice that even on products formulated with pure essential oils, the ingredient list sometimes reads "Parfum" or "Fragrance" rather than naming each oil individually. This is standard practice under international cosmetic labelling guidelines, which group all scent-related ingredients, both natural and synthetic, under the same umbrella term.
Eartha's products follow this convention. Our labels list "Parfum (Fragrance)" as an ingredient, and we include a clear disclaimer noting that this refers exclusively to pure essential oils. No synthetic aroma chemicals are used in any of our formulations.
This is worth knowing when you're reading any product label. The word "Parfum" alone does not tell you whether the scent is natural or synthetic. What tells you more is the brand's full disclosure, their sourcing philosophy, and whether they're willing to answer direct questions about their formulations. Brands that use pure essential oils generally have every reason to say so clearly.
The cost of doing it this way
Essential oils are expensive to produce. It takes a significant amount of plant material to yield a small volume of oil. Roughly 4,000 kilograms of rose petals are needed to produce one kilogram of rose essential oil. The quality of the oil depends on growing conditions, harvesting methods, and distillation, variables that synthetic production simply does not have to contend with.
Fragrance oils, made in laboratories from consistent chemical inputs, cost a fraction of the price and produce the same scent batch after batch.
We absorb the higher cost because we believe the experience of a product formulated with real essential oils is categorically different from one built around synthetic scent. It is not just a philosophical position. It is something you can feel.
What this means for Eartha's products
Every product in the Eartha range is scented exclusively with essential oils, chosen for both their aromatic quality and their therapeutic purpose. The blends in our body oils, hair oils, and pulse oils are not just pleasant scents. They are formulated with intention, using oils selected for what they do as much as how they smell.
For those who are pregnant, nursing, or sensitive to essential oils, we also offer fragrance-free versions of our body and hair oils, because no scent at all is always preferable to synthetic fragrance as a substitute.
Explore our body and hair oils, all formulated with pure essential oils and nothing synthetic.
