This soap is commented.

If she is in the bathroom and there are guests, you can expect a few Aesop anecdotes.

This is because washing your hands has been part of the arrival ritual of visitors for two years, since the beginning of the pandemic - take off your jacket, preferably your shoes as well, then please make sure to go to the bathroom for a moment.

But it also has to do with this soap.

When the guests return, they say, for example: “No soap smells as good as this one.” Or: “What a treat, the matching hand cream too.” Or: “Oh, it really does have Aesop in it.

I was recently with a friend who put some DM stuff in the bottle.

Smelled totally disappointing.”

Jennifer Wiebking

Editor in the "Life" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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This soap, or rather this beauty brand, has made it – also in Germany – a distinguishing feature of an upper middle class.

Not only the visitor comments speak for this.

If journalists and novelists want to describe the lives of their protagonists in more detail, then the mention of Aesop in the bathroom clarifies a lot.

When bathroom manufacturers stage their products in pictures, showers, washbasins, shelves, they prefer to place Aesop on the shelves.

This may be due to the design of the bottles, tubes and jars: white background, black typeface, extremely tight, small font - as if there really is a lot to say about this soap and as if its owner could naturally find the concentration to read through it all .

Flavor, Feel, Aftertaste

But it's also because of what's inside and how that smells.

Together, this results in a kind of attitude towards life.

Aesop has long been something for more than a few "Monocle" readers who feel at home all over the world.

Namely also for those who are rooted in a place from which they do not constantly chase pictures of their bathroom shelves into the digital world, and who have nevertheless been paying attention to which angle which product is where for a while – Marie Kondō has hers Leave traces.

If you start at the origin, in the first hours of the brand in 1987, you end up with Suzanne Santos, who has been working for Aesop and its founder Dennis Paphitis since year one.

She lives in Melbourne, where Aesop was born, and if you listen to her on the team call, she talks about washing your hands in three acts: "The aroma, this feeling, the aftertaste." It's not easy to forget a soap like this.

Something similar could have happened to some customers of a Melbourne department store, back then with the first body and hand creams, hair care products, and oils.

The department store allowed the young brand to sell its products.

Suzanne Santos knew that simply putting them on the shelf would not be enough.

"People first have to hold these products in their hands, and I made sure of that: I applied the hand cream directly to the customer." At that time, Aesop had no counter in the department store, just a small table.

Santos regularly fetched fresh water from the washrooms, then approached people.

It took courage to address people directly, she says.

“I had no prior sales experience.

But I was rarely turned away, probably because I somehow knew how to approach people.