Every word on a Velvet Sylph bottle should mean something specific. This page says what ours mean, and it says what we do not claim, which is the part most brands leave out.
What is in the bottle
Fragrance concentrate and ethanol. That is the whole formula. No water, no colourant, no filler.
Every scent is an extrait de parfum, which is the most concentrated of the standard grades and the one above eau de parfum. That is a category, not a marketing word: it describes how much fragrance oil is in the alcohol.
Food-grade, and never denatured
The ethanol we buy is food grade, the same grade of spirit used in drinks rather than the industrial kind. We do not denature it.
Denaturing means adding a bitter or toxic agent so the alcohol cannot be drunk, which lets a producer avoid beverage alcohol duty. Most fragrance is made with denatured alcohol and there is nothing wrong with that. We buy the undenatured grade because those additives have a smell of their own, and it is a smell that sits on top of the opening notes. It costs us more. That is the entire reason we mention it.
Vegan
No animal-derived ingredient goes into any Velvet Sylph fragrance. No musk from an animal, no civet, no castoreum, no ambergris, no beeswax, no lanolin, no honey. The musks and ambers in our scents are made in a lab, which is where nearly all of them have come from for decades.
Cruelty-free
We do not test on animals, and we do not ask anyone else to test on animals for us. We do not sell into any market that requires animal testing as a condition of import.
Where it is made
Hand-blended and bottled in the USA, in small batches, poured to order rather than made ahead and warehoused.
How long it lasts
Each scent page gives a longevity and a projection. Those are what we and the people who wear them typically get. They are not measurements and they are not a promise. Skin chemistry moves them more than anything we control, and so do heat, humidity and how much you apply.
If a bottle does not perform the way you hoped, that is exactly what the sixty-day guarantee is for, and it applies to a bottle you have used or emptied.
What we do not claim
This is here so nothing on this site has to be read generously.
- We are not certified organic. “Organic” is a regulated term in the United States and we hold no organic certification, so we do not use the word.
- We hold no third-party certification of any kind, for vegan status, cruelty-free status or anything else. The statements above are ours, made in our own name.
- We do not lab-test batches and we publish no certificates of analysis. We do not claim purity percentages.
- We make no health, skincare or wellbeing claim. Fragrance is fragrance. It is not good for your skin and we will not tell you it is.
- We do not claim to smell identical to anything. Where a scent is inspired by a fragrance we admire, we say so and we name it. That is a starting point, not a copy, and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the houses we name.
- We do not claim our ingredients are better than anyone else’s. We tell you what ours are and let you decide.
If something here is wrong
Tell us and we will correct it. Write to us and a person reads it. We would rather change a sentence than defend one.