Abel

Abel is an independent fragrance house that makes perfume from entirely natural ingredients. It was founded by Frances Shoemack, a former winemaker, who launched the first scent in Amsterdam in 2013 [11]; the company is now based in Wellington, New Zealand, and distributes globally. Earlier in its life the brand traded as Abel Odor [13].

The house is built around a single idea: that a 100 percent natural perfume, free of petrochemicals, can match the performance of conventional fine fragrance. It pursues this through ingredient transparency, biotechnology and a small group of trained perfumers. The brand remains founder-led and active, having put its full range through a substantial relaunch in 2025 [10].

Frances Shoemack came to perfume from winemaking, having grown up on a farm in New Zealand before moving to Amsterdam around 2011. There, by her account, she discovered a niche world of artisan perfumery but found no natural fragrance house that met her standards — the industry, she says, leaned heavily on petrochemicals and offered few sophisticated natural alternatives. That gap prompted her career change and the creation of Abel.

The brand's exact starting point is recorded slightly differently across sources. Several editorial profiles place the founding in 2013, when Shoemack launched her first all-natural fragrance in Amsterdam; The Quality Edit noted in early 2025 that "Abel turned 11 about a month ago," consistent with a 2013 start [11]. Abel's own website is vaguer, describing the company as founded "over a decade ago" — wording that has elsewhere been read as roughly 2014 [2]. The specific, cross-validated year given by independent coverage is 2013.

Shoemack works with a small perfumery team rather than as a solo nose. The company names master perfumer Isaac Sinclair and Dr Fanny Grau, a perfumer who holds a PhD in biochemistry and leads much of its biotechnology work. Sinclair's background is itself described inconsistently: Abel's current site calls him Paris-based and "New Zealand's only Master Perfumer" [8], while an earlier third-party profile described him as based in São Paulo and "Australasia's only Master Perfumer" [13] — a discrepancy that may reflect a relocation over time.

Abel groups its outlook under the phrase "Radical Fragrance," which the company frames as a refusal to compromise between sustainability and quality. The approach rests on full ingredient disclosure: Abel states that it was "the first fragrance house to share our full ingredients list," publishing the complete contents of each scent on the box and online rather than hiding them behind the catch-all term "parfum." Every formula, according to the company, is "100% natural, petrochemical-free," with each ingredient derived from plants, yeast or fungi.

The positioning also carries a deliberately anti-consumerist note. The brand says it closes its online store on Black Friday as "a quiet protest against the breakneck pace of consumerism," and it operates a "one in, one out" policy under which a new perfume launch is matched by retiring an existing one. Its scents are unisex, and priced at the upper end of niche perfumery.

Abel's catalogue is built on eau de parfum, alongside perfume minis, discovery sets, room sprays and gift sets. Its range includes scents such as Cyan Nori, The Apartment, Nurture, Pause, Laundry Day, Green Cedar and Cobalt Amber, with Double Scoop introduced as a newer launch. Shoemack has described Cyan Nori as the brand's best seller and the fragrance she is "most proud of."

The technical centre of the brand is its use of biotechnology. Abel describes biotech ingredients as fragrance molecules made in a laboratory from plant sugars, fermented by living organisms such as bacteria, fungi and yeasts into scent compounds — a process the company likens to winemaking. Shoemack has compared the shift to the car industry's move to electric power, calling biotechnology "a renewable solution that eliminates the need for fossil fuels." Recent formulations draw on biotech-derived molecules such as ketamber and anisaldehyde, together with natural materials like passionfruit and tangerine extracts upcycled from the food industry [10].

The collection is positioned as vegan and entirely plant-derived [13], and the full range is certified cruelty-free by PETA, which the company says verifies that its products and all of their ingredients are not tested on animals [3].

Sustainability runs through the brand's packaging and supply chain as well as its formulas. Abel's eau de parfum boxes are made from 100 percent recycled paper — by the company's account, 40 percent from used coffee cups and 60 percent from post-consumer waste — and its 50ml bottles use removable spray pumps so the glass can be recycled kerbside. The brand has also developed compostable perfume caps made from a plastic alternative it calls Vivomer, which it says breaks down within 20 weeks when returned to nature [3]. Some components, such as room-spray caps, remain plastic because of sourcing constraints, which Abel says it intends to phase out.

As part of its 2025 relaunch, the company reported tightening its supply chain so that ingredient and packaging suppliers operate within a 400-kilometre radius of its Dutch production house, and said it had cut the carbon footprint of its box packaging by 97 percent [10]. Shoemack summarised the redesign as an effort "to make Abel the lowest impact, the most sustainable, but also the highest quality."

The first Abel fragrance launched in Amsterdam in 2013. The brand's most significant later development was a wide-ranging relaunch unveiled in 2025, described by the company as several years in the making and backed by $1.5 million in funding [10]. As part of it, all nine of the brand's genderless scents were reformulated over 18 months, with their concentration raised to 37 percent to improve longevity, and the line moved to new conical bottles using recycled glass and compostable biotech caps [12].

Abel's profile rests largely on trade and editorial coverage rather than formal awards; no specific award has been publicly named. The 2025 relaunch drew features in BeautyMatter, the New Zealand Herald's Viva and The Quality Edit, which variously framed the brand as a leader in conscious fragrance and a disruptor that redefined natural perfume [11][12].

Abel is active and remains led by its founder. Its most recent visible activity is the 2025 relaunch — combining reformulated scents, redesigned packaging and a revised retail strategy — alongside fresh product launches such as Double Scoop promoted on its website [10]. The company continues to distribute internationally from its New Zealand base.