Who: Yasmin Sewell, founder of Vyrao, which describes itself as a multi-dimensional wellbeing brand that’s just launched with five, high frequency fragrances. Yasmin’s trajectory to fragrance and wellness is through a stellar, 22 year career in luxury fashion, buying for London stores such as Browns and Liberty, as well has having her own fashion agency supporting emerging indie brands. She has terrific personal style, combining casual glamour with cutting edge shapes and colours, and is usually wearing The Next Big Thing in terms of interesting brands. Her personable nature makes her a natural saleswoman, useful when launching a whole new idea around fragrance wearing, she also plans to extend the range with more wellness products in the future.
The connection between wellbeing and fragrance is something we’ve been talking about here at We Wear Perfume for some time, as we all start to look to scent as a way to elevate or change our mood, particularly after the pandemic. Yasmin has taken the concept and really made it covetable, with great attention to detail (the tester cards are a joy) and really lovely fragrances. We asked her to reveal a bit more about this new move.
Today I’m wearing Witchy Woo by Vyrao. It’s deep, rich, earthy, wild, elegant and out of this world
All of our scents are made with the intention of evoking specific positive emotions and we used certain plant and flower remedies for each. Witchy Woo is about courage and creativity, I find it incredibly empowering and magical.
I never realised until recently how important fragrance was for me. I’ve always, until now, just worn one fragrance that I stayed loyal to for years and only changed when I had a significant life change. With Vyrao I am wearing all five, I rotate based on the mood I feel or want to channel.
Theres a sort of healing aspect to these fragrances, Vyrao comes from the latin name vireo, I really loved the word and felt it had energy and vibrancy. It means ‘I am verdant, I am vigorous’ and ‘I sprout green growth’.
The I am Verdant fragrance is like an energetic boost and I tend to use in the morning wake me up and clear away the previous day. Free 00 is just an instant dive into a summer holiday, liberation and sensuality, Magnetic 70 is so powerful with its woody masculine notes, Witchy Woo for all I said above and Georgette is our rose, it’s a spray of self love.
The ingredients are listed on the boxes as the sentiment of what we want you to feel, it explains the emotional benefits of the fragrance and why we chose each ingredient. So with Free 00 we’ve used orange flower – which is very anti anxiety. This fragrance feels to me like its the most energetic, it wakes you up, clears away the for before illuminating the day ahead.
As I’m working with my brand, the five bottles are with me all the time on my desk, so I’m spraying a few times a day. I scent my home too, I adore Lyn Harris’s Perfumer H Ash candle. She is the perfumer for my brand and for our candles which will be coming later this year.
The creation of these five fragrances happened all through lock down so gosh, they really helped me, they were like little sparks of joy at all times, combined with the fact that I’ve created something I’ve always dreamt of doing, it definitely helped me get through it all. I started on the idea in 2019 and was working on it all through 2020. I didn’t mind that all other work dried up, it set me on a clear journey that I was meant to go on.
I feel I have moved into wellness rather than just moving into perfume, because it’s really about shifting and changing the energies in our bodies. I have always loved fragrance – although I never thought I’d create my own brand – but it came to be such a good tool for shifting emotion. Fragrance brands have often talked about the link to emotions, but I felt like I could take it further, using specific ingredients and specific remedies together with a bit of magic in each bottle…for the believers.
There’s a little Herkimer diamond crystal in every bottle that’s been charged and chanted with prayers by my energetic friend Louise Mita, to create the magic.
Although we are a new brand and we literally just launched (via a pop up space in Selfridges) I can already see customers interested in our point of view. I’m sure because we talk about the essences and healing aspect to the brand, it sounds a little different to other niche fragrances in the market. We’ve noticed immediately once someone buys our High Five sample set they come back and buy more than one bottle.
I really wanted to use colour in the brand because it has energy. Every colour has a vibration, we spent a lot of time looking at the colour for each fragrance, it took a long time. I also wanted something that felt like a new classic. It needs to be new luxury: something that feels vibrant and new, but not too ‘spiritual’. The time of black and white in luxury is over, it doesn’t give quite as much joy.
