Clean Fragrance Brand ST. ROSE rē•spin’s Wellness For Self and the Planet

This month, we would like to take the opportunity to celebrate women, bringing our focus onto those going the extra mile to make our world one that promotes women’s health and wellness.

ST. ROSE is a luxury, sustainable fragrance company whose brand ethos — good for you, good for the planet — embodies an expansive notion of wellness that we believe in here at rē•spin. Ever on a quest to extend compassion to fellow humans, to animals, and to the planet itself, we can’t help but admire the parallel values embraced by St. Rose’s founder, Belinda Smith. 

As you will learn, she is a trailblazer in the field — rē-spinning the beauty industry in a cleaner, a more sustainable direction that aligns wellness with her business model. In the process, the brand concocts evocative scents in minimalist-chic bottles to elevate any beauty cabinet to boudoir territory. In the process of making beauty cleaner, she is supporting other women — as well as humanity as a whole.

“Consumers today have more choices than ever and are also very savvy, so the demand for authenticity from brands is paramount. I think it’s easy to see through skin-deep sentiments,” Smith states of the beauty industry’s growing calls for ingredient and business model transparency. 

The fact is that the clean beauty movement has picked up steam because the United States lags far behind other world powers in regulating beauty and fragrance ingredients. The only U.S. Federal law regulating the $100 billion beauty industry is 82 years old and less than two pages long. Due to a legal loophole (that will begin to change in 2025), brands have not been required to disclose the ingredient profiles that make up any ‘fragrance’ or ‘parfum’ in their products.

ST. ROSE does things differently, creating vegan, cruelty-free, and leaping bunny-certified fragrances that are free from BHT, phenoxyethanol, parabens, phthalates, nitro, or alicyclic musks, and artificial colorants. “We proudly bare all and share every ingredient used in our fragrances,” Smith explains of the brand’s commitment to transparency and setting the bar high for other brands to follow suit. “Our hope is to empower and inspire our customers with transparent ingredient disclosure.”

Smith, whose background was in luxury and high-street fashion, was determined to change the industry status quo with her own fashion-adjacent brand. “My insatiable curiosity about the ingredients in all personal care and beauty products, fragrance included, stemmed from a combination of health scares that woke me up to being vigilant about what I was nourishing my body with,” she says. “I’ve always been curious about the journey of a product before it reaches the sales floor. We’ve seen fashion come a long way with stepping up traceability in regards to socio-economic and environmental practices in the supply chain [but] personally I feel that beauty has some catching up to do.”

Hence, St. Rose was born — a luxury fragrance house that is devoted to creating scent profiles that are free of ingredients they find harmful to people or the planet. “This certainly allows us to spritz away with abandon and to breathe in more deeply,” she adds.

This also means ethical sourcing, with their signature sandalwood ethically sourced from their farm in Western Australia, which partners with the local Aboriginal community through a 50/50 business model to redistribute profits. It also means taking part in 1% for the Planet, a non-profit organization through which participating businesses pledge to give back one percent of their profits to sustainability-minded non-profits.

When applying fragrance, you are also investing in a sensory experience that can absolutely transport you; after all, let’s not forget about the emotional connection we all have with scent.  “Fragrance and music, for me, are two of the most transportive art forms,” Smith says. “Fragrance takes me back in time to familiar places, and even to dream of unseen worlds. Sense, emotion, and scent are so powerfully connected.”

Photo Courtesy of St-Rose.com

We are admittedly partial to the fragrance Juliet in White, but if Smith had to choose, her favorite would be Desert Nomad. It was named to honor the Martu indigenous community at the brand’s sandalwood farm, whose ancestors are the last known nomadic people living in the central desert of Australia. The “magical” fragrance includes soulful sandalwood, vetiver, and palo santo, while pepper and ginger add depth, and clary sage completes the olfactory experience. The profits also give back to an indigenous-run non-profit, KFDF, to advance the indigenous population’s interests in the sandalwood industry; as you can see, ethics truly are at the heart of this brand.

Choosing your new fragrance will be a personal experience. “All of the fragrances in the collection start from a personal experience, but the true journey begins when someone falls in love with and forms their own connection to a particular scent,” Smith points out. To get started on your own clean fragrance journey, consider the scents created by ST. ROSE to shop for beauty with a deeper purpose.

As we celebrate the successes of women this month, Smith absolutely calls to mind the importance of gender equality, which is a focus of IWD. Not only is she bravely taking a stand in the name of women’s wellness as a conscious entrepreneur, but her line is gender-neutral. While the beauty industry has traditionally impacted women’s health more proportionately, this new beauty paradigm furthered by Smith shows that everyone stands to benefit from the cleaner, more ethical standards she promotes.