The Aesop Effect: What a $47 Bottle of Handsoap Teaches Us About Worldbuilding

I never long to wash my hands more than when I'm inside of an Aesop.

Washing your hands in an Aesop store is an experience. The sink is immaculate. The soap lathers into something that smells like crushed geranium petals sprinkled with freshly cracked black pepper and pink salt. Your hands feel softer, cared for, luxurious. You leave smelling like you've just stepped out of an apothecary in another century.

The interiors are so soothing to my nervous system. Warm moody lighting. Limestone. Even the skin fixtures have loads of character.

And after I’ve spent 45 minutes walking around the tiny shop, reading every label, I find myself splurging on coriander face oils, 16.9 oz vials of $47 handsoap, and parfum. Aesop has built a world so coherent, so sensorially rich, so carefully tended that you want to bring a piece of that world home with you.

This is what I call The Aesop Effect. It’s what happens when a brand isn’t trying to sell you a single product or optimize your benefits or solve your problems. It’s what happens when the brand itself is a world that you love seeing yourself inside of.

What Aesop Actually Built

Aesop didn't just create good products. They built a world. And every element of that world is in conversation with every other element, creating a coherence that you feel in your body the moment you walk through the door.

And what’s lovely about it is that this world isn’t perfect. It’s not formulaic. It’s not teeming in sales signs and discounts and overbearing associates. It’s soothing. It smells good. And the people who shop at Aesop just generally like being in the shop.

• The stores are beautifully designed. No two Aesop locations are identical, but they all share an aesthetic language—natural materials, muted tones, clean lines, an almost monastic simplicity. The design doesn't scream luxury. It whispers it. The space feels like a sanctuary, not a shop.

• The sensory experience is everything. The smell hits you first—earthy, botanical, complex. Not sweet. Not generic "clean." Something deeper, more interesting. You want to get closer to it. The textures matter—the glass bottles, the weight of them in your hand, the smooth pour of the soap. The ritual of washing your hands at the sink in the store isn't transactional. It's an invitation to slow down, to be present, to experience care.

• The language is precise and evocative. Aesop doesn't talk like a typical beauty brand. Their copy is literary, almost philosophical. They reference literature, architecture, history. They treat their customers like intelligent beings who appreciate nuance, not consumers who need to be convinced with buzzwords.

• Every touchpoint is coherent. From the packaging to the website to the way staff speak about the products, there's a consistency. You're never confused about what world you're in. You know it's Aesop before you even see the logo.

This is worldbuilding. This is what happens when a brand understands that people don't just buy products, they buy entry into worlds they want to inhabit.

They Made the Ordinary Sacred

What I also love about Aesop is that they took something completely mundane—handsoap—and made it feel like a luxury.

Handsoap. Something you can get for $2 at any grocery store. Something functional, forgettable, utilitarian.

Shampoo. Toothpaste. Face oil.

But Aesop reframed all of it.

They said: What if washing your hands wasn't a chore? What if you could be transported into a wild mountain meadow through your shampoo? What if your moments of care, ritual, and small everyday tasks were luxuries? What if the scent were both incredibly subtle, yet lingered on your skin and reminded you throughout the day that you're someone who values quality, attention, beauty?

Suddenly, $47 doesn't seem unreasonable. Because you're not just buying soap. You're buying the experience of being someone who washes their hands with geranium and pink salt. You're buying entry into a world where even the mundane is treated with reverence.

This is the magic of worldbuilding: It transforms the value of what you're offering by changing the context in which it's received.

Your offering might be "just" a coaching session, a workshop, a healing modality. But when it's nested inside a coherent world—when every detail, every word, every sensory cue is in conversation with the essence of what you're building—it stops being "just" anything. It becomes an experience people want more of.

The L'Oreal Acquisition (And What It Teaches Us)

In 2023, L'Oreal acquired Aesop. And if you've been paying attention, you've noticed the shift.

The ingredients lists have gotten... sus. A little more synthetic. A little less aligned with the botanical, apothecary ethos that Aesop built its world on. The margins matter more now. The care matters a little less.

I'm not here to drag L'Oreal or mourn what Aesop was. But I do think this moment is instructive.

The dominant culture knows that worldbuilding is queen. They see what Aesop built—the loyalty, the coherence, the way people will pay $47 for handsoap—and they want to co-opt it. They want to extract the value without maintaining the integrity. They want the brand without the slowness and care that made the brand possible in the first place.

But what this culture of extraction never gets right are that the worlds that stand are the ones that prioritize slowness and care, even if it makes profit margins a bit smaller in the long run.

You can't fake coherence. You can't rush worldbuilding. And when you start cutting corners—when you prioritize profit over integrity—people feel it. Maybe not immediately. But eventually, the world starts to fray.

This is why worldbuilding as a practice is also worldbuilding as protest. It refuses the logic of extraction. It refuses to be optimized into something soulless. It insists that care, coherence, and slowness are not luxuries, they're necessities that hold up the integrity of what we building.

What The Aesop Effect Teaches Practitioners

If you're a healer, ceremonialist, guide, or creative practitioner building an online business, The Aesop Effect offers some critical lessons:

1. Coherence is felt and it cannot be explained.

You don't have to tell people you've built a world. They feel it the moment they encounter your work. Every detail matters—your website aesthetic, your email tone, the way you describe your offerings, the sensory experience of being in your presence (even digitally). When all of these elements are in conversation with each other, people sense the coherence. They trust it. They want to be part of it.

2. You can make the ordinary feel sacred.

You might think your offering is "just" another healing session, another workshop, another creative container. But when you nest it inside a world—when you treat it as a ritual, an experience, an invitation—it transforms. The value isn't just in what you're offering. It's in how you're offering it, and the world it's part of.

3. Worldbuilding creates desire that transcends logic.

People don't need $47 handsoap. But they want it. Because they want to be part of the world Aesop built. The same is true for your work. When you build a coherent world, people don't just logically assess whether your offering solves their problem. They feel drawn to it. They want to inhabit the world you're tending.

4. Every touchpoint is a worldbuilding opportunity.

The Aesop store. The packaging. The copy. The scent. The sink. All of it contributes to the world. Your business is the same. Every email you send, every post you write, every conversation you have—it's all worldbuilding. The question is: Are these touchpoints coherent? Are they all pointing to the same essence?

5. Slowness and care are the foundation.

Aesop didn't build their world overnight. They built it brick by brick. One bottle of soap at a time. One store design at a time. They tended the details. They refused to rush. And when extraction (in the form of L'Oreal) tried to speed things up and cut corners, the integrity started to slip.

Your world will require the same commitment. You can't rush it. You can't optimize your way into coherence. You have to tend it, slowly and carefully, until it becomes something people can feel.

You're Not Selling Products. You're Building Worlds.

Stop thinking about your business as a collection of offers you're trying to sell. Start thinking about it as a world you're building,

What does it feel like to be inside your world? What do people smell, sense, experience when they encounter your work? What rituals are you inviting them into? What ordinary aspects of their lives are you making sacred?

When you approach your business this way, everything changes. You're going far beyond marketing. You're creating coherence, sensory richness, invitation. You're making people long to wash their hands in geranium and pink salt, metaphorically speaking.

This is what we practice in Worldbuilding School.

Over six weeks, we don't just help you structure your offers or craft your messaging. We help you discover the essence of the world you're building and bring every element into coherence with that essence. We walk through the 6 Phases of Visionary Praxis—from clarifying your medicine to building sustainable momentum—and we do it together, slowly, with care.

Worldbuilding School starts November 11th. Learn more and enroll here.