Pan-African local luxe: All things fragrance and skincare with Très Nagual
Florian Baumann and David Plenderleith craft small-batch soaps, scents and skincare products with conscious care at their natural perfumery, Très Nagual, near the Cape Point Nature Reserve.
Glamour: Tell us about how you got started in the industry.
Très Nagual: We lived on a farm in Switzerland with a forest nearby. The texture of our days felt soft with the atmosphere of a slow turning. In preparation for a community gathering, we reflected on what we wanted to create: what could be our offering to the community? How could we express our gifts and love? We felt a yearning to bring things into being with our hands. We felt a strong calling to work with plants, which resulted in our first batch of soap: tea tree-and-walnut leaf.
Glamour: What inspired your business idea and how did you start?
Très Nagual: This work started as an expression of our love and creativity, and continues to exist in that way. Every product touches both of our hands, whether it’s sourcing, formulating, pouring, designing, packaging or selling. Every step of our creative process is met with presence and a commitment to create beauty. We’re inspired by nature's song and we celebrate life by creating new worlds of meaning and possibility.
Our intention is to nurture pathways of wholeness, balance and regeneration. We believe holistic skincare is a medium to incorporate ancient wisdom in contemporary ways. We believe in moving consciously with the seasons, cycles and the circadian rhythms that occur throughout all of existence. We are inspired to live in harmony with the natural world and find our strength in balance.
Glamour: What is the most rewarding part of your business?
Très Nagual: Washing our lab equipment of glassware, beakers and giant soap pots. Through this process, we experience the furthermost, distant layers of our work. The last notes, so to speak, diffuse, lift and delicately move through our space. It’s as if these aromas bring a strong sense of captivation and wonder, reminding us of the magic of scent. The way it lingers in our home and environment truly enhances our innate connection to this work and its layers.
Glamour: How do you ensure that you satisfy the needs of your customers?
Très Nagual: We invite you to “meet” our perfumes, to encounter their personalities and see how they respond to yours. There’s a full spectrum of charisma to be discovered at our scent table. We see a journey of scent as a precious process of exploration into the self, others and the heart of nature. We see our work as a sensory encounter of fragrances that are of the Earth and hold themselves with a sense of totality, fully embodying their colour, scent profile and olfactory architecture.
Each customer is invited to be guided through a journey of finding their scent, and matching the personality of a fragrance to theirs. Our sales consultant and wordsmith, Boudica Collins, holds this intuitive process with excellence. At the scent table, we prompt the inner world, being curious about how the fragrances are received. What visions do they conjure up? What feelings do they evoke? What does scent propel you towards? When perfume is fully experienced, a beautiful process of co-creation between the art of scent and the delicate design of the human senses unfolds. Très fosters the space for that. We have a deep love for storytelling through smell.
Glamour: What makes your products so unique?
Très Nagual: We are purists, so we only work with 100% pure and natural ingredients. Our aesthetic is raw, incorporating natural tones. Formulating natural perfume is an intricate process of alchemy, skill and creative intuition. It takes an attuned nose and an acute connection to nature’s fragrant offerings to create a perfume that captures the essence of its source while weaving a scent profile entirely of its realm.
Glamour: Which is your most-loved product among your followers?
Très Nagual: Moon is one of our most signature scents – it’s made to support the work of healing practitioners. The moon opens channels of cosmic connection while also holding safe, grounded space for the sensitivity of energetic fields. This gentle but powerful fragrance carries a deep, soft and introspective feeling; a sense of going inward, dancing with the shadows and phasing between fullness and emptiness, just like the moon itself. Miel de Rabat is the scent of the sun. It’s a memorable, golden fragrance, rich with sensations. Its imagery can be imagined as a row of flowering bitter orange trees, along a dry chalk-washed wall warmed by the desert sun. It incorporates notes of sweet basil, Moroccan mint and distant yellow immortelle flowers and evokes a scene of doves taking flight above the minaret as a call to prayer sounds.
Glamour: What innovations do you have planned for the future?
Très Nagual: We’re currently developing a signature scent for Spier Wine Farm in Stellenbosch. It’s carried by the enchantment of sensory exploration through the botanical landscape, and is the story of a fairytale. The sweet, honeyed and flowery aroma of immortelle etches a gold lining along this scent profile, completing it with an atmosphere that is like a memory cloud of a festive time. We’re excited about this collaboration and being inspired by this particular landscape.
Glamour: What would you tell your 18-year-old self about achieving your goals?
Très Nagual: Pay attention to the way you feel. Live with gratitude in your heart. Trust and honour what feels most aligned. It’ll lead you to wondrous places.
Glamour: What is your beauty mantra?
Très Nagual: Listen to the language of the smells around you. Their seamless creation of a natural movement through time. May you be made whole.
Glamour: And your biggest motivation?
Très Nagual: To live, make, manifest and celebrate the beauty way.
Glamour: What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Très Nagual: Everything is within.
Glamour: If you could leave the house with two just beauty items, what would they be?
Très Nagual: Our Moringa calming serum is the first. It’s formulated with a balance of floral and herbaceous notes, awakens something gently invigorating, and stirs a sense of calm movement through the world. Secondly, Verthe, an anti-perspirant body mist, is perfect for beating the summer heat. Its application feels like sailing smoothly into distant horizons with a revitalising, fresh aeration.