Yasmin Sewell Uses This Perfume To Boost Creativity

Every scent evokes an emotion. In Scent Stories, TZR asks tastemakers, celebrities, and industry insiders to share the stories behind the smells of their past and present.

Yasmin Sewell has always known the power of scent. The founder of Vyrao — a “high vibrational” brand of fragrances, candles, and incense — worked in the fashion industry for over two decades, most recently as the VP of creative at Farfetch, before embarking on a new journey of fragrance, magic, and emotion. But even in her fashion career, Sewell constantly found herself drawn to the spiritual world — the grounding powers of meditation, energy work, and crystal healing.

Scent, according to her, is the simplest way to access the mystical and psychic. “When I started Vyrao, my purpose was to find and create a product that had a tangible way of sort of connecting with the good vibes that we feel through scent,” she explains. She describes Vyrao as “a combination of the psychic and the science.” Each of the fragrances has been energized by her healer to help the wearer channel their highest vibration, while the notes are scientifically proven to help the wearer evoke different emotions, from opening up intuitive pathways to greater self-love or magnetism. “With magic comes great creativity,” says Sewell, who explains that her own creative channels have increased since trading fashion’s never-ending trend cycle for the slower world of scent and wellbeing.

Ahead, Sewell shares her Scent Stories that make up her life and the notes that help her feel more joyful, confident, and creative.

The Scent Of Nostalgia

“Calvin Klein Escape was the first fragrance I ever bought. Oh my God, I loved it. It was super summery — it did feel like I was escaping with that fragrance. And I remember wearing it to the beach, so it reminds me of the ocean a bit, and of being young — of when I was 14 or 15 living in Australia. My best friend Emily and I both bought it and wore it. She kept wearing it up until last year, actually.”

The Scent Of Happiness

“Vyrao Free 00. This scent is literally summer in a bottle. Whenever I use it, I feel light and energetic, happy and free. It contains lemon, mandarin, orange flower absolute, jasmine, vanilla. It's our most delicious scent and it's so uplifting and summery. My friend who owns the Six Senses in Ibiza loves Free — they love it so much that they made it the scent of the hotel!”

The Scent Of Love

“When you say love, I think about my grandmother, Georgette, who I named my rose fragrance after. She really showed me what unconditional love was, so Georgette the fragrance was created to evoke feelings of self-love. I lived with her for a lot of my life when I was a child, and so many of her teachings power me in everyday life. I have this memory of her wearing Elizabeth Arden Red Door, but also of her growing roses in her front garden. We used to go down there together to pick those roses and she'd lay them around the house. She just was the sweetest, most loving person I’ve ever met.”

The Scent Of Creativity

“I was in fashion for 25 years. I was in a creative industry, and I was around and worked with so many incredible people — the world's best fashion creatives. But I have to say that I feel more creative now with the process of creating and launching Vyrao. The scent that absolutely embodies that is Witchy Woo. That's our scent evoking feelings of creativity and courage. It's the one I go to probably the most. You can be very creative, but not have the courage to do things. It doesn't go anywhere. And then you can have a lot of courage, but no creativity — and that doesn't go so well. It's the combination of the two that's really the magic combo. Witchy is really magic — it’s complex, it’s deep, and it's empowering. I modified it into an incense as well. What I love about incense is that you take one stick, you light it, and within three or four seconds, your house is kind of transformed. My home is like a laboratory for all of my fragrances.”

The Scent Of Comfort

“The Pacific ocean — that vast, big, scary Pacific ocean smell — and the smell of eucalyptus. Growing up in Australia, the scent of nature and the ocean is something that I'm really connected to. When I go back there, I literally just sit by the Pacific ocean and smell all those smells. It really does take me back to sort of the happiest times of my childhood. Also eucalyptus oil — it's very Australian, but I quite often will use eucalyptus oil to clean my kitchen. I just love the way it's so reminiscent of my childhood. We used to eat eucalyptus lollies, like sweets, you know? My grandmother used to take me down to the pharmacy and I'd grab them and eat the whole packet of them.”