2025 Summer Perfume-Making Week

How to Create Sustainable Fragrances - a Five Day Workshop for Artisan Perfumers

Our summer perfumery workshop will take you on a journey from someone who loves perfume to someone who can make perfume. Recently there has been a clear shift towards exploring upcycled naturals, synthetics, and materials produced through green chemistry and in this course, we’re going to learn how to make fragrances as sustainably as possible.

• Date: Monday to Friday, 19 - 23 August 2025
• Time: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. UK time
• Where: 4160Tuesdays' studio in Hammersmith

Group size: The group is limited to 8 people so everyone receives personal attention from our perfumer, Sarah McCartney.

Important notes

• Age: This is a class for adults. Our studio is a workspace and is not insured for children to be present. We can accept bookings for ages 15+. Thank you.
• Accessibility: Our classes are in an old building, held in the upstairs studio accessible via a narrow staircase with no handrail. If you need special arrangements, please let us know before you book.

Summer School 2025 concentrates on modern perfumery styles, using sustainable methods and materials. We’ll work with naturals and molecules (as they’re called in the industry), natural isolates and molecular distillations, nature-equivalent materials, and white biotech materials.

“Just chill and follow your nose, guided by the LADY herself, through the rabbit hole into wonderland, literally.” – Cesar - workshop attendee

What we'll do:

We have five days of practical perfumery, our sessions run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. UK time each day. This will include live instruction perfume making sessions, as well as time for students to work on their own.

We provide all the materials and equipment that you’ll need to make the fragrances set out in the course, as well as some of your own bespoke, handmade perfume.

Each day you’ll be set two tasks + an optional bonus:

• Accords to sit at the heart of that day's fragrance style
• A finished fragrance working to one of Sarah's formulas
• Adapt the day's fragrance to make your own variation

Working with natural and synthetic materials, we shall be exploring the benefits and limitations of both.

The aim of the workshop

To help you understand how to:

• Create new fragrances of your own
• Assess and incorporate new materials into your work
• Minimise waste.
• Understand how materials interact and work together

The result: perfumes you can be proud of.

Perfume materials have a range of properties beyond their aromas. Becoming familiar with their scents is only the first part of becoming a perfumer.

We shall be exploring their different characteristics and learning how they behave, and how to blend them effectively.

The course is run by Sarah McCartney, 4160Tuesdays' perfumer.

Why now is the time to care about sustainable perfumery 

To meet UN climate targets - and for the EU 2030 Green Deal - all industries must adapt and improve. Even for those operating outside the EU, it will still have an impact as most perfumery materials are in use in the EU, so their manufacturers and producers will automatically comply.

The only materials available for our use beyond that time must have a neutral or positive impact on the earth, or must be considered "essential" - not the same as essential oils. 

This change will affect the production of perfumery materials, both natural and synthetic, and will have an even bigger impact on packaging.

The major manufacturers and suppliers are already adapting and planning ahead, and while many brands will go right up to the line and drop unsustainable products at the last moment (and probably blame IFRA out of laziness) we have the opportunity to adapt now. By developing new formulas and refining current ones, we can avoid a last-minute scramble in 2029.

While the fine fragrance industry makes a relatively small difference, the materials we use are also used for laundry and personal cleaning products - where the massive amounts are used worldwide and wash straight into the water supply - so if materials which affect marine life, including many essential oils, are banned or restricted, then it affects us too.

It often comes as a surprise to people that the most sustainable products are not necessarily naturals. 

• For example blackcurrant bud absolute uses 25kg of blackcurrant buds to make 1kg of absolute; perhaps in future we should be eating the blackcurrants, and using an alternative synthetic.
• Similarly, by the traditional route, it takes 1000kg of rose petals and a lot of water to make 1kg of rose absolute. The ground could have been used to grow grapes, for example.

It's no longer going to be a matter of pride to say how much of the world's rarest resources are used up to make a drop of expensive scent.

Sustainability isn’t just about materials; it’s about saying it as it is

Bluewashing (covering up a lack of community responsibility) and greenwashing (the same for ecological responsibility), making marketing claims that are misleading, vapid and often downright untrue, aren't going to stand up when well-informed customers can see right through them. 

Greenwishing - stating what you hope to do without any proof - is equally scorned by perceptive young people. If you're planning to go into perfumery, how do you do what's right?

Information on materials is available on the bigger companies' websites as they are opening up about their progress, but it can be difficult to interpret. 

Cancelling – Ts & Cs

We realise that things crop up that people weren't planning for.

• If you cancel 30 days or more before your workshop, we will refund you completely.
• If you cancel between 14 and 28 days beforehand, we will move you to a later date.
• If you cancel within 14 days, you can pass your seat on to someone else, or you can spend the money on our perfume. Fair’s fair.

“Sarah is incredibly knowledgable and was a wonderful teacher/ support throughout the workshop." - Charlotte - workshop attendee