How An Australian Hairdresser Built An Empire Out Of Soap And Shampoo

How an Australian hairdresser built an empire out of soap and shampoo.

- Finlay Renwick

Inside a small store in Rome’s Piazza di San Lorenzo in Lucina, a woman called Suzanne is holding my left hand and gently washing it in a bronze sink. Looking on is the film director Luca Guadagnino. He is wearing a slouchy green cardigan; a Prada backpack sits at his feet. Light pours over us through a large window, highlighting the intricate rhomboidal-patterned travertine floor, inspired by a nearby church. “There is a special reverence for the sink in every Aesop space,” says Suzanne. It is a lovely sink.

Suzanne Santos is Aesop’s chief customer officer and I am in Rome to visit the Australian skincare brand’s first store in the Eternal City, the interiors of which have been overseen by Guadagnino—director of Call Me by Your Name and Suspiria— and his recently established design firm, Studio Luca Guadagnino.

“As the church, this is a place for peace and quiet reflection,” Santos says. “Once that door is opened and once you’re inside there, it’s just us. It’s like a bubble, a metaphorical bubble. Outside sound is reduced and the lighting always comforts you. That’s very precious and if we’re at our best, you should walk out with such a good sense of self.”

Short-haired, radiant, serene and a bit scary, Santos readily deploys the term ‘Aesopian’ to describe employees. She is the brand’s primary and most passionate envoy, training both staff and customers in the Aesop way. “I can’t veer away from the complete sense of sincerity we feel towards the product,” she says. “How much it means to be able to stand in the space and offer it to a person with an utter sense of its worth. A sense of the contribution it would make to their lives.”