The Scorpion and the Frog

Newsletter #17: Aesop Aurner

A scorpion asked a frog to carry it across the river.

“Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”

“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself as well.”

“That’s true,” said the frog. “Climb aboard, then!”

But no sooner than they were halfway across the river the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown.

“Why on earth did you do that?” said the frog. “Now we will both die.”

“I can’t help it,” said the scorpion. “It’s my nature.”

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Throughout history there have always been ways for the wealthy to indicate to one another that they are among fellow travelers. Jewels, dialects, secret rituals, a taste for the bizarre and the strange - status symbols. Those wishing to join the upper classes then pick up these rituals, and soon enough what was exclusive has become common, and the wealthy move on to a new fascination.

The best example of this in the early 21st century is the amber-hued black and cream labelled bottle of Aesop hand wash that’s probably in your bathroom right now, refilled with a less expensive soap.

I’ve got one such bottle sitting next to my kitchen sink. It’s an old plastic canister of Aesop Resurrection, which I bought for my mum as a birthday gift once (if I’m going to spend $53 on a bottle of soap, it has to be a special occasion). She liked it so much she repurchased a couple of times and passed one of the empty bottles on to me. I refill it with a $3.99 Pears handwash that I think is one of the best smells on earth, a deliciously old fashioned spicy herby resinous amber.

It’s probably the farthest thing from the signature Aesop smell, a spa-like watery botanical essence that smells like you’re wandering through a hinoki forest as the sun is rising and the trees are still covered in dew. If that sounds pretentious, it’s because it is meant to be.

Aesop began as a store in Melbourne and there will always be a distinctly Melburnian feeling to the brand, both in the artisanal quality of its products and the smug sense of superiority that it is, in fact, better than everyone else.

If you’ve never walked into an Aesop store, I encourage for the out of body experience alone. Though they live in shopping malls and high streets the world over, walking into an Aesop always feels like stepping into a luxury spa retreat where you, with your dirty sneakers and your reusable supermarket bag, certainly do not belong. The lighting is warm and low; there is an abundance of stone and marble and wood; the Aesop products, totalitarian in their uniformity, line the walls like inmates in the quiet penitentiary.

Aesop stores always have the feeling of the utopian refuge where the wealthy hide away in an apocalyptic future, which is to say they are tranquil with an underlying fission of unease. Walking out of one with your hemp-sack perfumed bag filled with face mist and hand scrub surely summons the ghost of Karl Marx to hiss ‘bourgeois scum!’ at your back as you pass over the threshold.

The aggressive minimalism of their storefronts are echoed in the brand’s culture. Aesop’s head offices have been described as 'an upmarket prison cell’. Their staff are labeled ‘Aesopians’ who are directed to only use black Moleskine notebooks and to not eat food at their desks.

The wellness-adjacent sincerity of Aesop is a part of its allure. There is an earnestness to the brand, a solemnity, that you can’t help but be charmed by. You can never quite buy into the lifestyle they’re selling but the level to which they have committed to it is impressive in our cynical world.

It would be easy to put Aesop in the box of brands that are all aesthetic and no substance. But the substance here is actually worth noticing. Since 2005 the brand has slowly built a collection of perfumes that would most accurately be labeled as designer or masstige but are distinctly niche in feel.

Aesop’s brand and therefore their perfumes are built on a deep and almost meditative respect for nature. (Ironically, it is most popular with urbanites and city dwellers.) The brand is B-Corp certified and if you’re brave enough to engage one of the salespeople they are all too happy to give you a history on any given natural material in a product, where it was sourced, and how it can benefit you and your health.

This is reflected in the smell of their products, which smell like they’re made for the people in Byron Bay who think they are hippies while living in beachfront mansions. Aesop smells like nature, but better. Curated. None of the nasty stuff. None of the rough edges. Only the quiet morning, the peaceful sunrise, the birdsong.

The defining characteristic of Aesop’s olfactive style is what I would call aromatic naturalism. Their perfumes have a light, watery, diluted feel to them, like the smell you get from an essential oil diffuser. Indeed one could see the entire Aesop project as an experiment in taking essential oils to the most sophisticated olfactory form they are capable of.

None of Aesop’s scents smell overly synthetic but their naturalism does not have the heady punch of full-force natural notes either. Every scent at Aesop is at a remove, as if even when they’re sprayed on your wrist you are seeing them from behind a pane of distorted glass.

The overall feeling I get from Aesop’s style of perfumery is a strange aloofness, a distance, like having a conversation with someone when they won’t meet your eye. This is true no matter whether you are smelling the clever cold spices of Marrakech Intense or the incense and sandalwood of Eidesis or the powdery rose-vetiver of Rozu.

I’ve written about Aesop before, and every time I wander down to the fancy chemist that stocks them in my city I bravely sniff the heavy amber bottles under the beady eye of the salesperson and think, ‘this would have been a great room spray’.

Aesop is a room spray kind of brand, perfume for people who don’t think they like perfume. I know plenty of people who tell me they refuse to wear perfumes and would rather use essential oils, and I always direct them to the Aesop counter to smell what an artistic talent can do with them as a palette.

The majority of Aesop’s perfumes have been created by Barnabé Fillion (independent) and Celine Barel (IFF). We can only assume that the house code of Aesop is ruthlessly curated by the brand - I can almost see them sending feedback notes saying ‘make it smell less perfume-y’.

The limited amount of perfumers and slow - though recently quickening - progress of releases have helped to give Aesop’s perfumes a pleasing consistency. They all smell different, but still tangibly Aesop. There was no reason to expect that their latest release created by Barel, a chamomile scent called Aurner, would be any different than the rest.

Except for the small matter of the $3.7 billion buyout by L’Oreal.

Aesop was founded in 1987 by hairstylist Dennis Paphitis, who first brought on private equity in 2010 before selling a majority stake to the Brazilian company Natura in 2012. Aesop hadn’t been the indie cosmetics company that could for many years - but it also hadn’t been chewed up by the big fish, the Unilevers and Estee Lauders and Cotys. It still had a unique brand identity - an Aesopian soul.

There’s a direct correlation between the cliff fall of innovation in a brand and their acquisition by conglomerate. If a brand has been bought it’s already done the hard work, established a brand identity and product offerings unique and successful enough to be worthy of acquisition. What the shareholders want now is more of the products that the consumer loves but with newer packaging, cheaper supply lines, and lower overheads.

That’s how it starts.

Then comes the staff departures. The store closures. The price rises. (Though to be fair, it’s 2025 - every price is rising). For the perfume lover the lurking fear of reformulation rears its head. And if you were the big fish who’d caught your prey, why wouldn’t you reformulate, start using your own supply lines, cut the costs? More of the same but cheaper, more efficient, more profitable.

It’s unrealistic to expect a brand to stay the same after acquisition because in a very real way it isn’t the same. The values and goals that fueled it aren’t the same. The amount of capital and the opportunities for expansion aren’t the same.

For a perfume house that often means that the drive for innovation, for artistry, can fall behind strategies to optimize the scents already in the line. Maybe something simple to produce first, a flanker of a beloved scent, or an extrait? A hair perfume - a body lotion - a body oil - a body shimmer. The same scent, just packaged differently. The same scent, in a special edition. More of the same - but different. One scent in a hundred different packages.

It’s not entirely fair to put all of that on the shoulders of Aurner. But it is true that the first releases under new ownership are important pulse checks for the vitality of a brand.

At first glance, Aurner seems to be a fine fit for the Aesop line: same joyless amber bottle, same sans-serif font spelling out an annoyingly unpronounceable name. It’s when I smelled it that I thought, oh. Oh dear.

Aurner does not smell bad. In fact it’s quite a pleasant thing, a soft and ambiguous pink pepper floral (the brand claims it’s magnolia leaf - if you say so) with the dry bitterness of chamomile lurking about underneath. I can smell the geranium and the cedar, and it all hums along at a fine, low pitch. It’s mild, far too mild for its $240AUD for 50ml price tag, and reassuringly pretty.

The thing about Aurner is that it’s designed to be a best seller. The thing about Aesop is that they have never consciously designed a scent to appeal to a mass audience before.

The more you sniff, the more you realise that the weird spacey feeling of the other Aesop scents is missing here. Aurner is a perfume you would wear to a pilates class, not for a weeklong silent retreat on a mountain. It is bright and clear and upbeat, distinct from its moody incense on the spa retreat Aesopian siblings.

Aurner doesn’t smell like fancy essential oils. It doesn’t smell the quiet luxury nature retreat. It smells like pink pepper and fake flowers and cardamom and cedar. It smells like a perfume.

In terms of a niche perfume there is interest enough in Aurner to make it worth sniffing. But you can smell the conglomerate in it, and for the art of perfumery that is a shame. It could be a perfume in any high quality designer line, a Chloe or a Hermes.

Aesop’s voice has been a strange and abstract presence in the world of perfume. But it was always unique. They have always been one of the rare brands bold enough not to bow to trends and instead have always done the more difficult work of choosing an aesthetic and convincing the market that it is valuable. In the end, it did this a little too well.

It’s not that I want perfume brands to not be successful. On the contrary, I want the brands that bring fresh, creative ideas to the world of perfume to live as long as possible. But the Sophoclean truth is that Aesop is merely the newest victim of the symbiotic relationship between art and capital: a brand needs both to be born, but one will always consume the other.

When a brand becomes successful enough it gets new owners who slowly begin to eat away at the unique brand and products that made it great until there’s nothing left but the same thing that gets a little bit more expensive and a little less good with every year that passes.

The desperate need to make a brand more profitable erodes the quality of what made it buyable in the first place. The scorpion can’t swim on its own, but he stings the frog anyway.

The shareholders can’t help it. It’s their nature. ▣