The shower, your stage
Aesop’s first cream cleanser for the body is a distinctly gentle formulation, enriched with emollients as well as botanicals renowned for their purifying properties. It leaves even dry skin feeling soft, supple and refreshed—imparting a woody, spicy, herbaceous aroma along the way.
A patient endeavour
The result of eight years’ curiosity, experimentation and determination, Eleos Nourishing Body Cleanser was fine-tuned at Aesop’s Melbourne laboratory. The ambition was to create a body cleanser with a rich, comforting texture that would effectively refresh the skin, while also leaving it hydrated and replenished—a difficult balance to strike. The company's scientists spent many months carefully blending oils and surfactants into an emulsion base, while ensuring its stability and cream-like texture. Many trials—and a few errors—later, the desired outcome was realised.
Aesop’s Director of R&D, Samy Hamada, says of the formulation: ‘Our experience in developing face cleansers tells us that drier skin types require non-disruptive, non-aggravating but nonetheless efficient cleansing containing mild surfactants alongside generous measures of emollients and hydrating ingredients. For many years we have harboured a desire to offer such nurturing, emulsion-based cleansing to the whole body, and following much experimentation we are able to realise that ambition with Eleos Nourishing Body Cleanser.’
Cleansing, choreographed
The sensorial qualities of Eleos Nourishing Body Cleanser are expressed through a specially commissioned dance piece that encapsulates what Aesop has done for over thirty years: elevating the daily act of cleansing into something joyful and poetic, where the shower becomes a stage.
This performance is central to the campaign’s storytelling, from store windows to social media. It follows five dancers on opening night as they make their preparations backstage. Before the show starts, they bathe under flowing waters, and a sense of shared excitement washes over them. Still under this spell, they take to the stage to spontaneously splash, dance and frolic.
One of those five dancers is Nayoung Kim, who also choreographed the piece. Nayoung has been an integral member of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch since 1996, performing in 24 of Bausch's groundbreaking works. Nayoung says of the piece: 'The dance is very abstract. We thought a lot about happiness. And then we thought about moisturising. And moisturising to me is like humans coming together: to touch together, or to exchange together.' She is joined by fellow dancers Sanga, Andrey, Aida and Sara—who also appear prominently in the launch campaign’s photography. Even in those still shots, a sense of movement and energy can be keenly felt.
Of movement and misted glass
Almost nothing about the campaign is static. In the product photography, water is used as a fluid, sometimes steamy, backdrop. Pine needles, patchouli flowers and clove buds—representative of the formulation's blend of essential oils—float on its silvery surface. A lilac tube is coated in droplets, as if newly emerged from the shower—and in need of a towel.
Within Aesop stores, the shower acts as a readymade sculptural form in a number of playful ways. In some spaces, stainless steel showerheads lay stacked in piles, suggesting they have rained down from the ceiling. Larger stores feature a series of continually flowing showers—the interplay of recirculated water, pressure and gravity putting on an unexpected window performance for bemused onlookers. Such public displays function as reminders of that far more private space, where even the less gifted dancers among us can indulge in our own creative choreography.
Songs for showering
On a similar note, Aesop has curated a musical playlist Songs for Showering as part of the campaign. Its songs are intended to be heard as the water falls and the steam rises—perhaps accompanied by resonant singing from behind the curtain.
‘Music is the language of the spirit.' Kahlil Gibran
RRP:
Eleos Nourishing Body Cleanser 180 mL HKD / MOP 320; 500 mL HKD / MOP 417
