by Brook Harvey-Taylor is arguably the god of “clean” beauty, the movement to produce products made without ingredients shown or suspected to be harmful to human health and the planet.
Launching vegan and cruelty-free Pacifica 27 years ago in 1996, she pioneered the industry. Before expanding across categories as we know the brand today — in skin care, hair care, hair care and body — her first ever launch was fragrance. Now, the beauty founder is introducing a new line of scents.
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“Fragrance is in our DNA,” she said of the perfumes, which are plant-based and functional—the term used for the sensory experience of smell.
“Functional perfumery to me is that we’re using a material that’s designed to elicit a positive mood or experience or affect,” said Harvey-Taylor. “It’s a specific topic that has the same impact on a lot of people.”
For example, one might imagine the smell of an orange and imagine, “It’s bright,” she continued, “while another person thinks, ‘It wakes me up.’ But [it’s] whose experience is like an orange. That’s the commonality of aromatherapy, but it’s also something we know in scent works.”
She was inspired to dive back into fragrances after losing her sense of smell for a year due to COVID-19, she explained. She is retraining her brain around smell. “It’s awakening your mind and that’s from an aromatherapy point of view. But he’s also digging into science and data.”
She’s bringing back “cult buys” with each fragrance priced at $27 and created with new blends (with the help of a Florida-based perfumer). Including hair and body mists at $13 each, there are seven fragrances in total including “Montana Sky,” using cedarwood, elderflower and sage; “Beach Day,” with sandalwood, orange blossom, and smoky notes, and “Passion Fruit,” with passion fruit, pineapple, and vanilla. They all use natural grain alcohol, pure alcohol made from fermented grain. They launch at all retailers on Sunday, with a TikTok Shop exclusive on Friday.
Each is now offered in 2 oz. bottles instead of the previous 1 oz. containers (sold for $22). “You’re getting a huge increase in value… I’m always about accessibility to create the best product and put it in the smallest size in the world. And making sure we’re meeting more people with our product.”
She also updated the packaging: “We designed our own bottles, because I want to make sure that we can screw the cap so that the bottle is recyclable. So that was really important to me not to have a crimp cap. And then for the first time we are using a cap on our perfume but for a little more prestige.”
Pacifica’s fragrance business is expected to grow about 40 percent in the next two years, according to industry sources, reaching about $30 million in sales in the coming years. Representing a steady 5 to 10 percent of overall brand sales for years, it grew 50 percent last year, year over year.
Some may not know that Harvey-Taylor’s roots are in aromatherapy. She is now based in Santa Barbara County in Southern California, and was living in Portland, Ore., when she created Pacifica. It was reading “Jitterbug Perfume” by Tom Robbins that led her down her path, which initially inspired her to start an apprenticeship in aromatherapy.
“I became very obsessed with essential oils and blends,” she said. “I would start mixing perfumes, and when she left the country — she was English — she gave me her entire library, so I had this instant laboratory, and I started creating perfumes.”
Harvey-Taylor’s first perfume was sold at a Grateful Dead show in Eugene, Ore.
“This brand was part of my childhood experience, my formative years really,” she said of growing up in Montana, where she lived on a cattle ranch.
“When I put together what I called ‘eating our pets’ that’s when I became vegan and very passionate about animal rights,” she said. “It wasn’t a trend, so for me, it was always important that Pacifica was 100 percent vegan and cruelty-free, and we definitely aimed to make a difference.”
In the beauty industry, she wasn’t seeing “a brand that was living its values the way I wanted a brand to live up to its values,” she said. (Pacifica has partnered with Plastic Collective, supporting the Asase Foundation in Ghana to collect and recycle plastics equal to the total amount of plastic used in Pacifica products.)
“For me, it’s always been really important as a change maker in beauty that beauty is not defined by what white, hetero, patriarchal masculinity defines as beautiful. It should be more than the unstructured freedom, joy and celebration that is transformative and what it means to each individual,” she continued.
Looking ahead, Harvey-Taylor is working on “skincare innovations,” she revealed, that will launch at Ulta Beauty in the fall. “A lot of what we’re doing right now is going back to our roots, whether it’s in aromatherapy or how we first launched our skincare around these real experience ingredients and textures and thinking on skin care in a unique way.”
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