Yasmin Sewell’s Vyrao Vision
The fragrance brand founder talks us through her transformational approach to scent, mood and emotion
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Yasmin Sewell’s Vyrao Vision
The fragrance brand founder talks us through her transformational approach to scent, mood and emotion
For Yasmin Sewell, fragrance is more than simply scents. There’s a sense of ritual, transformation, energy and intention in each bottle she creates with her fragrance brand Vyrao. She describes her ethos as to create scents that “feel as good as they smell”, with each perfume in the collection composed to alter your mood.
Fusing the principals of perfumery with the powers of neuroscience, Vyrao focuses on high quality, research backed ingredients that aim to shift emotions. Feeling blue? Reach for Sun Rae for a spritz of sunshine-scented joy. Need a moment to reset? Try the grounding positivity of Magnetic 70.
This year, you’ll find one of Vyrao’s latest scents, The Sixth, hidden within the Beauty Advent Calendar 2025 – and as we eagerly await the day we can open those Liberty print drawers, we spoke to Yasmin to discover more about her unique approach to scent.
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How would you sum up the Vyrao vision?
Vyrao is all about energy. We make fragrances that feel as good as they smell. They’re scents to transform your mood, emotion, vibration.
What set you on your fragrance path?
What set me on my path was wanting to bottle energy.
The brand is based on amplifying your energetic field, altering your mood, vibration, spirit – so we can do that through scent. Scents that really shift you, make you feel different.
In neuroscience, they have ingredients that are proven to help you feel better. So it was really about well-being, intention and little tools to help you feel better every day.
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There is quite a ritualistic nature to fragrance, is that something that plays into it when you're developing a scent?
It’s very ritualistic. With Vyrao people don’t just have one scent – or maybe they start with one and they get more.
If someone does have more than one, there is a ritual, which is incredible. How do I feel today? What am I missing today? Do I feel anxious? Am I ungrounded? Am I low in confidence? When you tune into that little feeling of what you think you need, and then make the choice to spray the scent that will boost that emotion – self-confidence, self-love, protection, attraction, sensuality, happiness, joy. I think that that is an incredible ritual for our well-being.
It’s also a ritual and a moment where you take a minute to check-in with yourself.
And how do you apply scent yourself?
I wear it all the time, because I have incredible scents around me all the time! I do that ritual check-in all the time, but I’ll do it at my desk in the middle of the day. Yeah.
Yesterday was 30° here in London, and I needed Sun Rae because I was feeling sweaty and hot and low energy. It’s the most incredible boost of happiness, like drinking a fresh juice.
I tend to wear based on what I need. If I’m going out at night, there are certain scents that I’m drawn to – like Witchy Woo or Magnetic 70 or Georgette.
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How conscious are you about the visual identity of Vyrao and how much of your past career plays into that?
I think that the visual and the branding of Vyrao comes from my 25 years in fashion. I worked at Liberty at one point!
It was really important to me to use colour because colour is energy and vibration. Colour makes you happy. I wanted to create a bottle that was colourful, yet felt like an object of desire that you could have in your cabinet or wardrobe and in your home for 50 years.
It was a test for using colour in a beautiful way. Every single colour we chose was selected for how it makes you feel.
I think that if you were to close your eyes and smell Witchy Woo, you would see purple, and if you close your eyes and smell I am I am Verdant, which is a green bottle, you would see green.
Tell us about the inspiration behind the scent The Sixth.
The Sixth is the scent that appears in the 2025 Beauty Advent Calendar for Liberty. I think it is a masterpiece, I really do.
We created this fragrance in a very unique way, and I’d like to think that no one’s ever made a fragrance this way before.
It was my sixth scent. I knew I wanted to launch The Sixth and I knew it would be called The Sixth and tha5t it would be the scent that opened up your intuition.
This scent is also neuroscience-backed: it’s our first neuro scent. We worked with the International Flavours & Fragrances Inc, Science of Wellness programme which has 40 years of research behind it. I believe if you’re mindful and connected then you will be more intuitive.
It is so magical. It is clean and uplifting and refreshing, one of those scents I think most people kind of fall in love with. The notes are super uplifting and refreshing. Apple, fennel, holy basil, peppermint. Plus, wormwood oil and gentian root – which are very magical and mystical. It also contains cypress oil and patchouli, which are both neuroscience-backed for mindfulness.
It's a herby, fresh elixir that I just think everyone’s going to love.
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