To Want Is to Be Able

Two and a half years ago, I ate seed oils like most people do. Then I started checking whether the health claims about them were true. The more I read, the less they held up.

I found people like Santa Cruz Medicinals and Paul Saladino who were saying the same thing. So I started reading the label on everything I ate or put on my body. I cut out seed oils and switched to butter and tallow.

Then I found something surprising. The "healthy" drink I had five times a day had vitamin E made from soybean oil. I thought I had quit seed oils, but I was still drinking them.

That label checking turned into TWILHEALTH. Over the next two years, I went from 190 pounds to 150, and a lot of men started doing the same thing with me.

About a year and a half ago, a blood test showed my thyroid numbers were low. I wanted to know why.

Cologne was the one thing I used every day that I could not check. Every bottle said the same two words: "fragrance (parfum)." That one word can hide dozens of ingredients. Some of the ones I knew about, like BHT and synthetic musks, were on the same lists I told people to avoid.

So I stopped spraying it on my skin and sprayed it on my clothes instead. My numbers got a little better. Then I stopped wearing cologne completely, and they went back to normal.

I can't tell you the cologne caused it. Nobody can, and that is the whole point. When a product won't tell you what is in it, you can't know what it did to you.

Now I had a new problem. I didn't smell bad, but I didn't smell like anything either. And I couldn't find a clean cologne anywhere.

So I tried essential oils like bergamot, cedar, vetiver and sandalwood. They smelled nice for about an hour, and then they were gone. Nobody standing next to me could smell them.

I tried mixing my own blends and letting them sit for weeks. My brother smelled one and told me it smelled like crap. He was right.

Next, I bought a fragrance oil that was sold as "phthalate free" and "paraben free." Back then, that was all I knew to look for. I wore it for weeks.

Then I found its safety data sheet. It listed BHT and BHA, two preservatives I had been telling people to cut from their food. I had been putting them on my skin every morning for a month.

That was the moment this got serious. If I could get fooled, someone who doesn't read labels for a living had no chance.

Every fragrance oil comes with a safety data sheet. It is a document that lists the risky ingredients inside and what each one can do. The supplier has it. The brand has it. But the person buying the cologne never sees it.

Some brands that call themselves "clean" still use ingredients like Lilial. Most never share their safety data sheets at all. That means you have no way to check what is in the bottle. You just have to trust a claim that might not even be true.

BHT and BHA are a good example. They are not officially labeled as hormone disruptors, but studies have shown they can affect hormones. Plenty of fragrances that call themselves "endocrine safe" still have them.

So I started checking the sheets myself. I graded 32,300 of them against a list of ingredients I won't use. Only 35 passed.

Then I looked at the brands. From one source, I pulled 48 sheets: 17 passed and 31 failed. I also read 16 sheets from companies that make copies of designer colognes. Not one passed. One even had a "clean" badge on its website while its own sheet listed two ingredients linked to reproductive harm.

Vouloir is built around that one document. There are only four ingredients in the bottle: organic sugarcane alcohol, the scent, triethyl citrate and water. Triethyl citrate helps the scent last, which is the job phthalates do in most colognes.

Every scent ingredient is listed by name and CAS number (a code that identifies each chemical) on the bottle and on our website. You can read the full safety data sheet and allergen statement on our Standards page before you buy.

There are ten ingredients we never use, and no known hormone disruptors in Vivant or Ombre. We say "known" on purpose, because the sheet is right there for you to check.

Vouloir is a French word. It means "to want." There is a French saying: vouloir, c'est pouvoir. To want is to be able. I wanted a cologne I could read before I put it on. Nobody made one, so I made it.

Vivant was our first scent. It smells fresh and clean and stays close to the skin. It has eleven published ingredients and nothing else.

Ombre and Séduire came next. Each one gets checked the same way, and if an oil can't pass the list, it doesn't launch.