We pretty much live, breathe, eat and drink the Aesop brand around these parts. We can’t get enough of their sand coloured labels, the black Optima Medium type and the lovely brown glass apothecary bottles. This is the de facto only acceptable brand for today’s urban modernist: founder Dennis Paphitis is our kind of boss, insisting that all staff at Aesop’s Melbourne HQ communicate in email using Arial Narrow type, typed on their all-black PCs. Only one style of pen is allowed in the office: the classic Bic biro. (Black ink version of course).
We first encountered Aesop, many years ago, at the Claska hotel in Tokyo. Then we began seeing it in all of our favourite Melbourne coffee shops – you knew you were in the right place for a flat white when there was a huge pump of Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash and Resurrection Hand Balm above the sink in the restrooms. We fell hopelessly in love with both products and are quite evangelical about them: every “opportunity to tidy” at the Civilian HQ now involves returning from the WC in a cloud of citrusy, woody aromas.
We are currently obsessed with two new Aesop products: the gloriously strong alcohol-free Mouthwash Bain de Bouche, which comes in a gorgeous brown glass flask, with its own little clear glass cup, and the Resurrection Rinse-Free Hand Wash. The mouthwash has a super-pungent, almost holiday-season cocktail-like aroma to it, with spearmint and clove notes. Gargle with this, and everyone will know it. The new edition of Aesop Hand Wash is our new travel essential: it has the same orange, rosemary, cedarwood and lavender aroma that we know and love from the full sized regular Hand Wash and Hand Balm products, but this is an alcohol-based sanitizer edition. You don’t need water, you just rub your hands with a pearl-sized drop of it, and you feel fresh as a daisy. As it comes in 50ml containers, it’s hand luggage in-flight friendly. We don’t check-in without it: “Keys, money, passport, Aesop Hand Wash…”