Perfume & fragrance

the name on the bottle isn't always who made it.

Perfume gets its own section rather than sitting under makeup, because the question you have to ask is a different one. Most fragrances you see on a department store counter are made under licence: a fashion house owns the name, and a separate company actually makes, sells and decides the testing policy for what's in the bottle. So checking the designer tells you very little. Gucci is the clearest example, its fragrances are made by Coty, and it's Coty's policy that matters.

The brand you recognise is often just the label. Check who's behind it.

The second thing that catches people out is mainland China, where animal testing is still required for a lot of imported cosmetics. A brand can be genuinely cruelty-free everywhere else and still be tested on animals in order to be sold there. It's the single most common reason a well-known fragrance house doesn't qualify, and it's why the filter below exists.

One more distinction worth keeping straight: cruelty-free means no animal testing, vegan means no animal ingredients. Fragrance uses more animal-derived material than people expect, musk, civet, ambergris, beeswax and honey among them, though most of it is synthetic now. A brand can be one without the other, so both are marked separately below.

which brands are kind

Cruelty-free fragrance brands only, not a full rundown of who does and doesn't test. A starting list rather than a complete one, and each verdict links to where it came from, so you can check it yourself rather than taking my word for it. For the ones that do test, or that are still being checked, see check a brand.

Know a fragrance brand I've missed, or spotted something that's changed? let me know and I'll look into it.