A fresh look and reformulated scents marks a new era of confidence for the 100% natural fragrance brand.
Twelve years ago, Frances Shoemack started a revolution. Now, she’s at it again.
The Abel founder is considered a disruptor of the fine fragrance category, and when the brand was conceived
in 2013, it redefined natural perfume – how it’s worn, formulated and marketed.
Together with master perfumer Isaac Sinclair, Shoemack built a wardrobe of scents that tried to address downfalls of the fragrance industry – the use of fossil fuels, drying alcohols and excess waste to name a few.
The pair set the benchmark for the future of fragrance, appealing to the next wave of conscious consumers by spearheading the use of biotech or upcycled ingredients.
Before she found fragrance, Shoemack was a qualified winemaker. The Cantabrian studied viticulture at Lincoln University and worked as a cadet at Villa Maria.
The pivot to perfume came in 2011 when Shoemack and her husband, Dave, relocated to Amsterdam. It was here that she fell in love with artisanal fragrance houses but couldn’t find one that flexed “natural” credentials.
It was especially important for someone who grew up on a farm in rural South Canterbury, one of six children raised by her father, a farmer, and her yoga teacher mother who was adept at using organic products.
So, she sought to create her own.
Shoemack connected with Paris-based Isaac Sinclair, who remains New Zealand’s only master perfumer, to ask if it was possible to formulate a 100% natural perfume. He proved the perfect match to execute her vision and has been an instrumental part of Abel’s story ever since.
Moving back to Aotearoa from the Netherlands was always on the cards for Shoemack and her family, which had since grown to include sons Rufus and Arthur. They made the decision to move back in time for summer 2020, and a container of their furniture arrived the week before the first Covid lockdown.
Today, Abel has nine genderless fragrances and is sold in 33 countries.
Photo / Babiche Martens
According to Shoemack , the decision to overhaul the brand now draws on everything she and Sinclair have learned over the past 12 years.
“When I started out, natural perfume wasn’t even a thing. Everyone said it wasn’t possible, so we were really paving our own path, and rewriting the playbook. As a business we’ve grown up so much,” she says.
“There’s all this knowledge that we could make way better perfume, and had a deep desire to do that.”
For Shoemack, one of the most important of the recent changes was reformulating each scent for improved performance (scents now sit at 37% concentration) and reimagining the supply chain so everything from ingredients to packaging suppliers fall within a 400km radius of the brand’s Dutch production house. And the changes are constantly being reevaluated.
“We’ve redesigned every component to make Abel the lowest impact, the most sustainable, but also the highest quality. I see so much potential in the future. We feel like we’re just scratching the surface,” she says.
“It’s not a ‘once every two years’ project. It’s a really ballsy move, for what it’s worth.”
Also on her radar is the goal to use 100% sea freight on all commercial shipments over the next three years – one which she calls the “lowest footprint method” to ship scents from the Netherlands to New Zealand.
Orders are sent in bulk (not individually) and packed efficiently to keep emissions as low as possible.
Photo / Babiche Martens
Greenwashing is still rife in the perfume industry, as evidenced by the number of brands releasing scents under the guise of being naturally-derived, yet still using alcohols or petrochemicals in their ingredients list.
Many fragrance houses attempt to satisfy the demand to be eco-friendly by reaching for easy wins – like factoring in supply chain ethics, or offsetting carbon emissions – but Frances says real change is formula driven.
“We think around 95% of fragrance ingredients are derived from fossil fuels. I say we think, because you just can’t find that number. These petrochemicals are part of a non-renewable, non-biodegradable supply chain. But then there’s all the links to endocrine [hormone] disruptors.”
She says the lack of transparency when it comes to labelling is worrying, as many brands don’t fully disclose every ingredient in their fragrance formula.
“We’ve been using the analogy recently that if you buy a shirt you want to know if it’s silk or polyester. There’s a huge difference in the quality, the way it wears on your skin. Why should you have to label clothing, but you don’t with perfume?”
With so many alternatives to fossil fuels available, Shoemack says it’s her hope that mass fragrance brands follow suit.
“Biotech and upcycled ingredients are such exciting alternatives. While they’re expensive now, in a matter of 10 years, when they’ve scaled further, we’re going to see the big companies really shift which is so exciting,” she says.
Until then, Shoemack is happy to be at the forefront of the movement, with Abel showing the bigger corporates what’s possible.
“We’re not doing this to be out there on our own, being like we’re the only ones that can do this. If, in 30 years’ time, there’s no such thing as petrochemical fragrance ingredients, that’s a success in terms of our North Star,” she says.
“If we can make that shift happen, I’d be so jazzed.”
Photo / Babiche Martens
It took Shoemack and Sinclair 18 months to reformulate the range, with Shoemack travelling to Paris every quarter to work on the project with him in person.
This isn’t the normal way the pair do business. They usually meet during the conceptual stage before Sinclair starts on the groundwork, sending Shoemack samples to test before they reconvene. But doing this in person allowed for each scent to be meticulously crafted.
“It’s so nuanced, at that point you’re really doing the final brush strokes,” Shoemack says.
“Isaac’s a real perfectionist. Sometimes we reach a point, and he’ll suggest we rebuild from scratch, just to check there’s no ingredient in there that’s superfluous.”
The newer of the brand’s nine genderless scents have changed less than the older ones, as many of these already use the biotech or upcycled ingredients central to the brand’s ethos.
Like upcycled tart cherry, a hero ingredient in Abel’s latest launch – The Apartment. It is derived from the water used to wash cherries in the food production process. The scent molecules from the wastewater are extracted and used in perfumery, which Shoemack says is “more beautiful than the petrochemical or synthetic counterpart”.
“It’s juicy and tart, and it actually smells how a cherry smells and tastes.”
Aldehyde is another – a fragrance note popularised by Coco Chanel in the original Chanel No.5 fragrance 100 years ago. It wasn’t until biotech aldehyde was developed that Shoemack considered formulating with the ingredient, and it became a cornerstone in the 2024 launch of Laundry Day, revered for its clean, crisp smell – channelling the scent of freshly pressed laundry.
Of all the fragrances in the Abel family, she says Green Cedar and Cyan Nori have changed the most. A bold move, considering the latter remains a best-seller.
Shoemack took the opportunity to take the “little too much seaweed on the top” off Cyan Nori, a note she describes as slightly provocative.
“We never want anything to be avant-garde. We’re making perfume that you love to wear – not to make a statement,” she says.
Higher concentrations mean each scent has a little more throw (meaning it lasts longer when applied to skin and clothes), but she was cautious to get the balance right to ensure they weren’t overpowering – especially for customers where subtlety is key.
“Japan is one of our biggest markets. They have a different sensibility when it comes to perfume; it’s restrained but sophisticated. It’s considered vulgar to be over-scented. The same is true in some Scandinavian territories,” she says.
Previously, Shoemack employed a “one in, one out” policy which kept the collection concise at nine scents – seven in rotation plus Nurture and Pause as core scents. While she says the policy served its purpose, she and her team are “thrilled” to no longer phase out their fragrances.
“We did it to go against this tide of stuff – this general feeling that we needed to be launching newness constantly, which was really ingrained in us as a brand,” she says.
“If you love a fragrance, it will be around forever.”
When Grey Labdanum was discontinued, one Belgian customer bought 40 bottles – a lifetime supply. Golden Neroli was the last fragrance to be phased out, which was pulled from shelves in February this year.
“The cool thing is that you can be really creative when you don’t have that restriction,” she says, adding Abel’s 10th fragrance is coming in early 2026, flanked by two others later in the year.
Photo / Babiche Martens
Three years in the planning, Abel’s new look sees the perfume housed in a conical-shaped bottle, crafted from 20% recycled glass topped with a biotech plastic-free cap that is fully compostable, which is the work of Base, a Melbourne design agency, and Lance McGregor, a Wellington-based designer.
Each bottle is boxed in citrine green packaging, a collaboration with Jeff Smith of British Papers, who developed a bespoke paper using an environmentally-friendly dye and is 100% recycled – 60% recycled coffee cups and 40% recycled paper.
The finished product aligns with Shoemack’s “highest quality, lowest impact” philosophy.
With its roots in Amsterdam, Abel’s influence has spread across the globe, with a presence in some of the world’s most premier department stores and independent retailers: Printemps in Paris and New York, Dover Street market and Liberty in London, and Nose Shop in Tokyo.
Shoemack’s vision for the brand includes additional doors across Asia, and revisiting retailers who may have thought Abel was a little ahead of the curve.
“In some ways we were too early with naturals. Like Dover Street, for example, their initial feedback was around us being too minimalist – we weren’t loud enough for their customer,” she says.
“But now there’s something like 3000 natural perfume brands, and they get pitched 400 odd brands a quarter. When I brought the new formulas to them in February, they were like ‘hell yeah – this is a game changer’.”
While there’s growth in some distribution channels, there’s the quiet decision to shift away from others. Currently, Abel is stocked in just shy of 300 retailers globally, 22 of which are based in Aotearoa. But this new strategy will see Abel reduce its retail presence to approximately 250 stores.
Shoemack says this hard-lined approach will ensure proper brand alignment across the board, improved communication with retailers and market positioning.
Opportunities keep knocking for the Abel team, but she says she won’t be lured into other categories until the time is right.
For now, building on Abel’s fragrance story is top priority.
“I’ve really got our blinkers on with where we see the growth happening. We started out to prove that you could do natural perfume, and we’re still on that journey of shifting the fragrance market,” she says.
“If we want to be world leaders, we have to be so focused.”
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