Beauty news: the pureDKNY A Drop of Rose story

I was pretty excited to hear that DKNY has come up with a third fragrance in the Pure DKNY series, and that this time it's all about roses - my favourite flower and the source of my nickname as a baby, Rosebud.

Called - naturally - A Drop of Rose, the emphasis for the fragrance was on including roses that have been grown with care in the valleys in Turkey and harvested naturally to ensure its purity and distance from technological processing.

As with its predecessors, A Drop of Vanilla and A Drop of Verbena, A Drop of Rose evolved in a non-traditional way and once again, the ingredient comes first. The pureDKNY rose story begins in Turkey’s Isparta valley in the Anatolian flower fields, where the delicate pink blossoms of rose damascene variety are harvested early each summer. It follows a generations-old process that’s virtually unaffected by modern technology, beginning with the harvest season that takes place each year in June. Each flower is hand-picke, one by one in the cool, pre-dawn hours, and by season’s end, an incredible 2500 tons of petals have been bagged, weighed, and transported by truck to the distillery where they are gently rolled and processed through 26 stills. The end product is essential oil of rose, a potent raw material that’s later incorporated into the fragrance, which I haven’t had the pleasure of sniffing as yet but sounds extremely pure and totally delicious!

I love the fact that the bottle is 100 per cent recyclable and the packaging is biodegradable as well. It reflects the spirit of the simple perfume effectively as an over the top bottle would have completely deviated from the point. Even the outer-cartons are printed with low-VOC inks, and the outer wrap is NatureFlex, made from cellulose (not petro chemicals). Very, very cool.

And last but not least, the fragrance will see pureDKNY continue its partnership with CARE - a leading humanitarian organization to help lift women out of global poverty. In honour of the launch of A Drop of Rose, DKNY will make a donation to support CARE, providing resources to help even more women escape poverty. CARE’s experience has shown that when people in the world’s poorest communities have access to basic financial services – including secure savings, credit, insurance, and other products – they can help lift themselves out of poverty, so it is a more than worthy cause.

pureDKNY A Drop of Rose is available on counters nationwide from April 7.