Clean Beauty Awards Winner Wild Coast Perfumery is Saving Trees one Bottle at a Time

A trip to Capri to visit the historic Carthusia Perfumery in the 1980s inspired a passion for fragrance in Laurie Arbuthnot Thirty years later, she launched Wild Coast Perfumery, a plant-based perfumery on beautiful Vancouver Island. Arbuthnot’s daughter Haley Dawe is Creative Director. The pair’s long-lasting perfumes are inspired by and named after meaningful Canadian locales and each location’s coordinates is printed on the bottle’s label in degrees.

Protecting Canada’s beauty is important to Arbuthnot and Dawe, so for every 50 ml bottle of Wild Coast perfume sold, $1 is given to the Ancient Forest Alliance. “I have always believed in protecting our old-growth trees in British Columbia, where less than 3% remain,” says Arbuthnot.

We spoke with Wild Coast Perfumery’s founder about the scent that won the 2021 Clean Beauty Award for best Perfume, Tribune Bay natural eau de parfum.

Why do you think Tribune Bay natural eau de parfum was chosen as the winner?

We uniquely incorporate at least one indigenous plant from the west coast of British Columbia into each perfume. Being able to pair that plants’ scent with other essential oils and absolutes helps to weave a scent story. In the case of Tribune Bay, it was developed in 2020 to bring the feel of the vacation we all were craving but not able to experience. Balsam Poplar, commonly called Cottonwood, buds produce a sweet, warm honey-like fragrance that pairs perfectly with vanilla and citruses. I think it was the scent the judges might have been craving.

Would you say this is your best-selling scent?

Perfume is so personal. When I have someone ask me, “What’s your best seller?” I hesitate to tell them because I want them to find the perfume that suits their own skin and personality. But upon saying that, Tribune Bay is one of our top sellers.

What are the ingredients in this fragrance?

The perfume is a blend of 25 plant-based, quality essential oils, absolutes, and tinctures blended and aged in a grain-based alcohol which is needed to help dissolve some of the sticky resinous ingredients and also needed for the maceration. Once it has aged to perfection it becomes happiness in a bottle!

What does winning this award mean to you?

It means so much. Being an entrepreneur or artist you tend to doubt yourself from time to time, so having our perfume selected reinforces our confidence in ourselves and our mission. We are very grateful for the recognition. We admire Vahy, the fantastic Australian perfume house that came second and third. I’m sure it was very close.

Why is being a clean beauty brand important?

There is so much misinformation and greenwashing out there and some products are literally making people sick. Being able to provide a truly clean product gets people thinking and questioning the products they are wearing. It’s a new era and the public is more educated and they are embracing small, remarkable, clean brands.

What’s next for your brand?

Scaling the business to be able to meet the demand for our plant-based natural perfumes. Keeping the best possible quality, always producing in small batches blended by us, and experimenting with new scent combinations. Collaborating with artisan farms and essential oil producers. For instance, we recently released Jasper eau de perfume that contains Tamarack oil that is produced by a small artisan producer in the Rockies.

Looking for more natural scents? Read about the top 10 natural perfumes and deodorants so you smell great, no toxins needed.