№ 27 – What Perfumers Hide with BBC Producer Natasha Cox

What happens when the romance of perfume meets the reality of child labor?

In this episode, Tanya speaks with BBC producer Natasha Cox, director of Perfume’s Dark Secret — a documentary uncovering the supply chain behind Egyptian jasmine and the hidden cost of luxury fragrance.

We cover:
• What 3 weeks in the jasmine fields revealed
• Why audits and “tick-box” ethics don’t protect workers
• How perfumer Christophe Laudamiel helped break the silence
• And why stories like this matter — even when change is slow

Plus, Natasha shares:
🎬 Her favorite documentaries (Paris Is Burning, Dark Days, Grey Gardens)
📚 Books she recommends: Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann and Middlemarch by George Eliot

📍Links:
 • Watch Perfume’s Dark Secret 

Ever dreamt about going to space? Connect with Tanya!

• https://www.instagram.com/neparfumer/
• https://www.coachmironova.com/

Transcript

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This episode is brought to you by the Institute of Perfumery. Applications for the super selection are open. Or are they? My guest for the today's episode is Natasha Cox. She is the producer and director behind the BBC documentary Perfume's Dark Secret, a film that, through the story of Jasmine fields in Egypt, uncovered the hidden cost of some of the world's most luxurious perfumes. Let's talk about that. Natasha, do you actually love perfumes? No, not really. If you want the honest answer. I mean, I have a couple that I sort of have on rotation for spring, summer, winter that are made in Paris, kind of a small independent perfumer makes them. I haven't really deviated from those in the last sort of six or seven years, but I am not. I don't really stray away from those two, so I can't say that I'm a lover of perfume. Not really. I'm sorry. You know, I was thinking that it would be a very nice transition that Natasha says, I love perfumes. And then I'm asking her, so why did you then decide to show the ugliest sides of the industry to people? However, please tell us why did you decide to do that? So, I mean, a lot of my work um sort of works with either kind of human rights stories or investigations. So I work with the BBC a lot and there are a few teams that I work closely with and they approached me really to say that they were looking into this. And if I wanted to join them and sort of develop it and... see if we could turn it into a long form investigative documentary. So it was really only when I started working with the producer of the film, Achmed, to work through his preliminary research did I start really thinking that there was a big story to tell here about, obviously it's a child labor investigation about... exploitation, but it is, you know, it felt like there were other things to explore here within an industry that, you know, lacks scrutiny, frankly. You know, I think fashion, lots of films and, you know, journalists have really looked into fashion in all, various areas. But beauty and perfume just felt like a really, you know, underexplored area. So... that really kind of picked my interest really to make the film. Have you thought why they approached you particularly? You don't like perfumes, you don't love perfumes. Yeah, I don't think, you know, the producer and director of the film needed to love perfume to make it. It's not a film about, the glossy, beautiful side of it. there are a couple of departments within the BBC, current affairs, strands. There's a big kind of flagship investigative department. that I've worked a lot in. I think that's why they asked me to come and join them I have had a lot of experience of working with vulnerable contributors. So working with people who, whether it's children or people who are deemed vulnerable because of the kind of circumstances that we find them in. So I think that would also maybe been part of the reason why I was brought in. So basically on a daily basis you see suffering. Mm-mm. And this is the path you've chosen. for the work that I do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. could you please elaborate why you choose this path? everyone has a different kind of trajectory when they're making films. it's not something I sit down and think about a lot. It's definitely where my strengths are and I know that I love doing it and there isn't really much more to it than that. I'm quite an inquisitive person, I want to know more about the world, I want to know more about why things look the way they do, I would like to scratch beneath the surface, I want to... join the dots when they haven't been joined. The challenge of doing that really gets me going. And then hopefully it has a positive impact at the end of it. so, yeah, this is why I do what I do. Yeah, well speaking about impact, I actually checked before I started recording that on YouTube alone your documentary was watched 1.6 million times and at the same time when I was approaching my perfumer friends and saying guys do you have any questions for Natasha because we're going to be recording an episode just few of them ever heard about this documentary. Mmm. Mm-hmm. Do you have the same perception that it reached audience outside the industry maybe even more than inside the industry? Have you had any feedback on that? I have had not much uh direct feedback from viewers. We know that it's done well on YouTube. We know that it did well across other world service platforms through the audio version of the documentary. And a bit, but no, I don't, I don't have a lot of insight into. into how many people have really engaged with it and from which kind of demographic. I don't really know that. don't know much about that. I really admire one of the comments which I received. You know, I'm Russian and in Russia people kinda tends to blame government for everything in case with the jasmine in Egypt One of the comments I got from somebody who watched the movie that it's probably the Egyptian government which is to be blamed. What do you think when you hear things like that? the project sort of started like that, in that this was a kind of localised issue where the Egyptian government were, you know, knowingly sort of exploiting, part of their vulnerable people in the population. It was all just part of a bigger thing within Egypt and the trade was just kind of corrupt. once we were there and actually kind of speaking to people, so we spent about three or four weeks in Egypt going around different locations at the kind of peak time of the jasmine harvest. you know, as much as the local factories are to blame. for the low costs, which is basically why children are involved in the collection of jasmine, because it's the kind of, to supplement the income for the family is why they bring their children into the fields. there human rights policies within kind of companies that are using this jasmine to create perfume and they have, you know, supply code of conduct where they say that they have no, child labor or forced labor or they work with these communities and whether they're providing education or health care or something, you know, they make all these big claims, right? So it just felt that within an industry that was making billions of dollars from this fragrance that they were getting from this part of the world. that actually we had to start looking at the supply chain. It wasn't an isolated issue to Egypt or to the local factories. This was something bigger. the job that I to do really was working with Ahmed on the film was to work out the supply chain, which as we said earlier, that is incredibly sealed, very secretive. Not a lot of people open up. It was really hard to get people to talk on the record about how it worked. And once we sort of mapped it, you know, we were able to kind of, really show that the responsibility lay at the door of these big conglomerates because they're the ones that are, you know, setting the budget anyway for making the fragrance. So that is the trickle down effect, but also they make all these big, these bold big statements about how much they are working with the communities and make sure that there is no child labour or forced labour. anywhere in their supply chain. So, you know, it was just kind of exposing that tick box exercise where they've really not got a grip on what is actually happening at the lower end of the supply chain. And then once we worked that out, it just seemed that this was all just part of it, right? So they were just, it's just so easy to kind of put pressure on the weakest, you know, in the supply chain. Yeah. Which felt like, you know, a big thing to sort of talk about within the perfume industry because I had lots of off the record conversations with people who worked in it, so I understood a lot more about procurement and how it works and why within these big corporations they put such a huge amount of effort into making sure that the cost of goods are as low as possible. So I really understood just kind of how it worked. um And so that's it. Once we understood it more, it just became more more important to be able to name these big companies first and be able to show what, where the wrongdoing was within their due diligence. So that's kind of, yeah. Why we didn't just stay in Egypt and start kind of, pointing the finger at the local factories or the government because it felt international. And that was the story that we really wanted to tell in the end. Yeah. And you decided to tell this story through the eyes of the Heba family. Yeah, so one family in the Alkabee region, I think it's really important when you are communicating these sort of issues to tell them through the eyes of the people who are living it. And it really helps a viewer kind of align their own emotions anyway to what's going on, which means that you then process the information more effectively than if you were just kind of told it on screen or you had a few sit down interviews. So it was important for me to spend as much time as possible with the family and to kind of be with them. through their lived experience. So when we were told that they were waking up at one o'clock at two o'clock in the morning and they were, know, Heba in particular, you know, would wake up her children and sort of wrestled them out of bed and dress them and take them to the fields. You know, once we sort of had these conversations with her about how we wanted to work, it felt important to be there for that, you know, that I would be there at one o'clock in the morning as she was. waking up her children, you know, from the age of five to 14, so that you really understand what it is that they're going through. we spent a lot of time with her in particular and I felt that with as much as we would try and get the evidence in the the the fields, the surrounding fields to make sure that we could show just how many children we did see during that three or four week period. and would say it was probably, although we didn't actually say it in the film, but it was probably about a third of all Pickers were children. How do you think why Heba decided to trust you to tell her story? Mmm. at the beginning when you are building relationships with the contributors because you have an idea of how you want to tell the story, it's so important to just spend time with them. No camera, no pressure of being filmed, nothing like that. especially if they're kind of sitting in the kind of vulnerable area of because you know her going out and sharing her story in that community is not a small thing, you know, she's the factories would then know that she's done that, you know, the risks are high. But we discussed all of that and what we could put in place and just made sure that, you know, we were very much on her side in all the right meanings of that kind of phrase those conversations were just over a meal, tea for the first few days, it took her as long as it took until she was ready to kind of share her story. And that's really important always really with vulnerable contributors, you just sit, listen and explore where they might feel comfortable in sharing their story and you kind of give them the agency and the choice so that they feel in control of the process. Do you know if anything happened with this family afterwards in a good or in a bad way? No, mean, nothing has really happened in either good or bad. The situation broadly is that the prices did go up, but, you know, not in in line with the kind of rising inflation. So they're still making what they were making when we made the film. They I think they've grown actually even more, you know, kind of disillusioned with this idea that they might be getting more money for the jasmine that they pick. even recently they have been kind of setting fire to the jasmine bushes. So that's kind of in the community. A lot of them in the last jasmine season, they've been kind of uprooting the bushes and kind of protest. So not a lot has changed. mean, there's definitely... more eyes on the pickers to make sure children aren't coming, but we've also heard on the ground that the story is just hide them when there are inspections. you know, it's, unfortunately it's not changed a lot. You know, it's so fascinating. Again, when I was asking my perfumer friends about the questions which they might have, one of the questions was, There is a joke and I believe it one of them uh English Queens or French Queens who said that the folk doesn't have bread and she says like so like give them cake Yeah, it's you know this phrase Yeah, this is basically the question that like they are picking jasmine let them pick something else or let them grow something else let them do something else and you've clearly been there and you know that they may might not have a choice or do they have a choice No, not really. mean, there's not a lot of work in this area. This is a kind of a region of Egypt that's really fertile because it's in the Nile Delta. it grows. Jasmine is like everywhere. And they're sort of specialists. mean, I think it's around half of the world's supply of Jasmine comes from this one area. So yeah, there's money to be made in picking Jasmine. Jasmine's growing there. there was another type, it's like a bitter orange, something else grows there that's part of their trade. There are just living in sort of, you know, small villages and this is one way of making money easily by just going out renting a couple of the lines of the jasmine bushes and then looking after them throughout the season. em they are kind of sitting there with a lot of choice of how they make money. I think that it wasn't a problem when what they would get for the picked jasmine would buy them meat and the things that they needed for their home. But now it doesn't cover... know, cost of a watermelon, which we kind of worked out. this is the real problem and why they're really suffering there. So basically no cake there. No cake in the Algobe region though. at this point. You know I've noticed that there is also another hero in a different sense it's Christophe Laudamiel which you have on record. he's also a hero from the perspective that it's not so easy to have a perfumer on the record. Mm-hmm. So please tell me how did you find him Yeah, I spoke to quite a few perfumers that were still working in fragrance houses and none of them would go on record, you know. um It was so hard. I think through a conversation that I had with one of them, they actually gave me the kind of tip off to say, you contacted Christophe? Oh. he's very vocal, you know, sort of internally um in the kind of perfume community about what's wrong with it. And I think he's just not afraid really to kind of, yeah, to pick it apart. So, yeah, I sort of just sort of kind of cold reached out to him and um said what I was kind of looking into. didn't give him too many details. And then we had a long conversation. And he just felt that this was the right project for him to kind of share what, you know, what were he thought the issues were. So yeah, he was, he was great. He was very good at also helping us understand a bit more, you know, more about the kind of conglomerates that sign a sit at the top. I didn't really know this, but you know, that they own the brands. So the brands don't know anything about these perfume bottles that they put on the shelves. They are not part of any of kind creative process in designing the perfume. They just put their name on it. So I didn't know any of that. you know, when we really wanted to understand what the kind of, where the responsibility lay with the kind of lack of due diligence checks. He was good at kind of explaining that it works with this, with, you know, the, this is how it will work. If there's a human rights issue that comes up, you know, he was the one to explain how it works. know, the conglomerates come in, they speak to the fragrance houses, they say, basically get rid of it. And some, in most cases will exit. They'll just leave that country where this, where this war material is grown and then they'll just move to another place. So yeah. you know? Yeah, I mean, it's scandalous. So he was brilliant and very brave and even more so given that we couldn't get anybody else to go on the record with what they were telling us. So yeah, we're indebted to him, definitely. He was a great contribution to the project. when you mentioned the auditing system. I was personally very amazed because I had a an experience a couple of years ago at Simppar. This is a major event where the raw materials producers gather. It's in Paris, a new one. And like sometimes it's in grass like last year, but usually it's in Paris. And you know, I brought there my partner and he's a software engineer and he had nothing to do. He said like, okay, I will just go and explore what these guys are doing to improve the world. He's like, kinda have your mentality. And he went to a couple of booths uh with a major raw material producers and asked them like, guys, do you have maybe a blockchain system for controlling the supply chain? And they said, we don't need it. And he said, why you don't need it? the answer basically was we have very good auditing system. Mmm. And your movie actually shows that the system is not good. was it something you didn't know before you start this investigation or you maybe knew it, I mean, firstly, auditing clearly wasn't working if, you know, they are going to check if children are working, you know, there and then they're like, no, no children here. When, you know, a third of the pickers are children from just the observations that we made. So, I mean, that was a kind of huge red flag immediately, which is that how we know what does this system, this kind of human rights due diligence practice that they're sort of engaging in. What does this even look like if they can say that they have no child labor? What are they, know, knowing that they have to sign up to this thing called, you know, the United Nations guiding principles where they have all these kinds of things that they say that they don't have. Or if they do that these are things that they do to kind of mitigate it. It was just like, well, what, where are we, what's happening here? if these checks do need to be done, what do they look like? Who's doing them? And so, yeah, that took a bit of work. on the ground conversations to begin with. So we had a few insights through the people that had experience of working in the factories and explained what those visits would look like from auditing companies. And it was like visiting out of season. you know, it was shocking in that it's a kind of easily, you know, a corrupted system where you can just pay these audit companies to audit specific parts of the process. So they can go around the factories, no think wrong here, no human rights abuses, totally fine, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And without... going into the field at all, which was how we saw it working within the Jasmine trade in Egypt. this is all part of the thing that I was talking about, about this big tick box exercise that they're all part of to ensure that they've lived up to their human rights due diligence commitments, actually it's not. and then we had also people that worked within these audit firms. who again off the record backed up kind of what it is that we thought was happening. this system of auditing, it's just not fit for purpose. we could make a completely separate documentary about how corrupt auditing is. Yeah, and I might but was Pandora's box of just as soon as we sort of started looking into it, it like this is a whole other thing. So... It was something very interesting to me personally, to be honest, since I never thought about it really, how corrupt it could be. And also the fact that these auditant bodies are kinda not a part of the fragrance system, you know, they are independent bodies. well, no, it's not part of our problem, it's not ours, it's just them, and then this is them, and then this is the Egyptian government, and then let them eat the cake, right? It's definitely an industry that has worked out how to kind of shift responsibility around, right? So you just, you can't even catch it. can't be, they've, it's just like, no, it's this person's fault. No, it's that person's fault. you know, it's like, this is all deliberate, isn't it? So to hide, you know, know, issues around human rights. And I think there's more to unpick there. mm-hmm previous movie which BBC produced was like 12 years ago, the Perfume like four different series about different aspects of the industry The important thing is that the movie was so romantic that it brought so many people into the fragrance industry. Now, 12 years after we have your movie, and it's a huge contrast, I'm wondering you know Natasha when you do movies like that and you talk to all these people who are really I Will still use the word suffering from the system How Much your faith in humanity is shaken Yeah, I mean, I go from one project that explores the worst cases of humanity to another, so I'm always on this shaky ground when it comes to faith in humanity. I was surprised with the perfume industry in that you could hide human rights abuses so easily. I was shocked because I think in fashion, you do have to do a lot more to show that you've explored your supply chain and that you don't have human rights abuses. I think people are looking at that industry a bit more keenly. I think it is under the spotlight a bit more. So I was... shocked at how secretive it was, which is one thing because, you know, protecting one's job is one thing, but when you know that you're working in a system where the costs of goods are kept as low as possible and you must have the imagination to ask yourself the question, what is the human impact of that? You know, that was where I suppose I started questioning quite a few players in the industry of just how this works and in terms of humanity. So yeah, there were moments where I was shocked. But if you're trying to make the big... the most amount of profit, which I think perfume is a good one for that because it's so cheap to produce and you can sell it for $300. I suppose one assumes that it's that expensive because everybody who is involved in making this is being paid a living wage, right? So that was my naivety, I suppose, when I'm starting out. I mean, it didn't last very long. These projects aren't really for me to explore whether I have faith in humanity or not, I suppose that's the other thing. They are just, can we get to what is really happening? Who can we expose as the wrongdoer? And can we change it? that, you know, whether I have faith in humanity or not doesn't really come into it too much. But do you have it? Do I have faith in humanity? Yes, I have faith in humanity. I always think, I think it's, I think when people are confronted with the truth of something and the injustices they bear, I think more often than not, people will do the right thing to try and change it, yeah. Do you think that having more exposure through different media channels, through different documentaries, through fiction as well, would really help to raise some issues and maybe change them? Or it's not the way the things are being changed? I do. think regardless of whether it's a blockbuster, you know, and you've, and you've brought, you've raised an awareness through a huge, you know, successful film that's reached millions and millions of people, or it's reached like five people through a radio documentary. I still think this is part of the same thing. It's raising awareness about, you know, things that we're living through, issues that are caught up in the human experience and how things work within these kind of capitalist systems that we now work within. And I think that when people are enlightened, it nearly always moves the conversation forward in the right direction. So that is, I strongly believe in that and the power of kind of... the media, whatever way that you communicate that is crucial to ensure that these conversations are continually had. Whether they have a media positive impact, you you'd like to think that something will change because of the work that you do. It doesn't always. The worry that I also had was that things might actually be worse for the pickers because if they were forced to keep their children at home. you know, the mothers would still be going out picking, nobody would be looking after the children, they're not making any more money because the kids aren't there helping them pick more jasmine, you know, I was genuinely concerned that even, you know, yes it's important to tell this story but what would the real kind of life impact be on the ground after it was told? Fortunately that has, none of those fears have kind of come true so that's okay, you know, they are still making the same amount of money, they're still putting pressure on the fragrance, on the factories to do more, to protect the work that they're doing and to pay them more. And those conversations still being had and now it's been exposed through this kind of global story. They are starting to have fewer places to hide now. So that is a good thing. It all seems to be moving in the right direction, even though it's Legislation is kind of coming in, but then it kind of rolls back a bit. it does feel that things are moving forward um in terms of improving human rights in global supply chains. So, yeah, I think whether it's a big film or a small report, these are really, yeah, I think it's all important work. And it actually feels very rewarding what you are saying, Yeah, because I think these stories stay with you, I'd like to think. know, whenever I sort of meet a family or an individual with a story to tell that kind of really exposes a lot of kind of injustices, and it's grabbed me as one individual and it's kind of, and it's made me think, you know, this has to improve in some way. I'm always imagining the audience will feel the same. so when you're looking at Perfume, you will imagine, you know, her... young kids in the jasmine fields at two o'clock in the morning picking the flowers and that image will stay with you and that is the power of communication through good storytelling not to say that i am a good storyteller but that but that is that is the power Well, your words are saying that you're a good storyteller, so please keep it. And you know, to confuse you even more, I would like to ask you a couple of blitz questions if you don't mind. Are you ready for them? Go for it. it if you had no budget limitations, what documentary would you start doing right now? I This is completely not my area at all. Like I have not worked in arts documentaries or anything like that. But if it was just like I had, was low budget, it was not a constraint. I'd want, and let me talk about access. So basically in this fantasy world of making films, I've got the access I want. I would want to explore the great painters. I would just want access to all their work. I'd want access to all their... eh their diaries, their fat, you know, whatever remaining kind of great great grandchildren existed. I'd want all of that and I just would like to start exploring their work. If I could do something, I'd like to do that. We need to share this episode as much as we can so that you finally get this access. Another question. Which documentary you wish you had directed? Mmm. Paris is burning. I think it's got to be that. now I feel like I have never watched it, so I will, if it's so good that you recommended it. I mean, there are so many good documentaries that I wish I directed. There's also a very good film called Dark Days where, em have you seen that film where a kind of community living underground in New York? I'd really like, yeah, I wish I'd made that. I mean, Grey Gardens is a really good documentary. Man on Wire is great. Anything that's got sort of, it captures kind of in a turmoil whilst also telling the story of the kind of, you universal human condition, I think are brilliant films. em So, Yeah, but I think Paris is burning just because it just looks like a blast and I would have just loved to have been there. rise. One book you would recommend to read to everyone. Oh, I've just finished Thomas Mann's Burdenbrooks, I quite like family sagas anyway, I find them fascinating. But I mean, he's a genius. I mean, that book is just, mean, the only other novel that beats it is George Eliot's Middlemarch. Yeah, I mean, if there isn't a God, I reckon she will do. You know this writer, Victorian writer, we all named Marion Evans, gave us a pseudonym, George Eliot. Middlemarch is probably the greatest contribution to English literature. yeah, it's just another kind of family story but you know there's love stories and caught up in it. It's just really reflective of the human condition with the best writing, you know, It's it's magic. Yeah. Well, and it's also magic for me to talk to you. thank you Natasha for being here. Well, thank you very much for having me.