Inside Vyrao's irresistible universe
How a fragrance house turned emotional transformation into modern luxury
The Brandsider decodes how modern luxury brands become magnetic. Subscribe for strategy playbooks, or enquire about working together on your brand’s strategy, identity, or digital experience.
November 29, 2025 | Edinburgh, UK
My favourite brands to study are those that make seemingly disconnected ideas feel like they’re part of the same world. Think of Skims, or even Miu Miu. The brands that shouldn’t make sense — but do, because the concept holding them together is unusually compelling.
So a few months ago, when I stumbled upon a high-end fragrance brand that featured Mia Khalifa in a new product campaign, I was immediately intrigued. What kind of brand can talk about latex, energy vibrations, and neuroscience in the same breath — yet still feel coherent?
It turns out: one built with founder-led conviction and an unparalleled commitment to world-building. The result is, in my opinion, one of the most impressive category entrants in recent memory.
In this case study, we’ll uncover:
Vyrao’s origin story and market context,
the deeper forces that make the brand magnetic,
and the key lessons modern brand builders can take away from its approach.
Let’s dive in.
Vyrao: Brand dossier
Founding story
Before creating Vyrao, Yasmin Sewell spent her career shaping taste at the highest levels of fashion. She held senior roles at Liberty London and Farfetch, and even launched a concept shop where she championed emerging designers long before they became household names (at just 22, no less).
But alongside her high-flying career, she also pursued her deepest passion: studying meditation, energetic healing, and quantum medicine on nights and weekends. For years, she lived in two parallel worlds: the commercial and the spiritual.
So when she set out to build a fragrance brand designed to influence mood and energy, it wasn’t a side experiment or whimsical dalliance. It was the natural convergence of her entire life’s work — and it was just a matter of time for it to succeed.
Market landscape
When Vyrao launched in 2021, the luxury fragrance category had never seen something quite like it.
With 50ml bottles priced alongside Diptyque (£107), Aesop (£145), and Le Labo (£172), Vyrao (£135) sits squarely in the premium-to-luxury tier. Its pricing reflects not only its materials and partnership with IFF, but also its differentiated positioning.
Most fragrance players in the emotion-led space evoke sentiment through nostalgia, personal memory, or romantic storytelling. Vyrao occupies a different lane entirely, staking its claim as “the first wellbeing brand to fuse energetic healing with master perfumery.”
Though it might seem fringe at first, the proposition quickly makes perfect sense: a brand built with conviction, coherence, and timing that aligns with a broader desire for inner connection within an overstimulated world.
What makes Vyrao magnetic
The Flywheel of Belonging™ reveals the mechanics behind Vyrao’s magnetism — four forces that, together, turn a simple product into a world people want to belong to.
Target niche:
The untethered & overstimulated
The emotional profile of people predisposed to feel the brand’s pull.
Vyrao isn’t actually built for the witchy type, even though its naming occasionally implies it. The brand’s true audience is far broader and more contemporary: those seeking emotional reconnection in a world that keeps pulling them away from themselves.
These are (mostly) women who exist in a constant state of low-grade overstimulation — high-functioning and emotionally literate, yet aware that they’ve drifted from their inner world. They’re drawn to ritual, but only when it’s refined. They value self-care, but are wary of spiritual clichés. And they want tools that help them recenter, but those tools need to feel both intentional and beautiful.
For example: They meditate on Headspace between meetings, track their sleep with an Oura ring, and light Diptyque candles alongside sage bundles to reset their space — all in quiet attempts to feel closer to themselves.
With most wellness brands, these women are asked to choose sides: scientific or spiritual, clinical or intuitive. But Vyrao refuses the binary — offering them a sophisticated ritual where both coexist.
Emotional pull:
Intuition in the age of spreadsheets
The worldview that draws people in, and the promise that delivers it.
Vyrao begins with a belief that feels almost radical today: that intuition, energy, and emotion aren’t secondary, but powerful forces worth honouring. In a culture obsessed with optimization and measurable progress, this belief matters because it reframes wellbeing away from performance and back towards internal alignment.
For Vyrao, fragrance is the medium for this quiet rebellion. Not as seduction, nostalgia, or aesthetic pleasure, but as a tool for emotional transformation — something that helps people tap into the deepest parts of themselves.
What sets Vyrao apart is how fully it commits to this worldview, blending two worlds that rarely coexist in order to deliver on it. Through its formulations and approach, Vyrao makes space for both the scientific and spiritual:
Each fragrance begins with natural botanical ingredients selected for their emotional and therapeutic properties
Every bottle contains a Herkimer diamond crystal charged through intention-setting and energetic practice
And through a partnership with IFF’s Science of Wellness program, Vyrao is pioneering neuroscents designed to measurably impact emotions
The promise is clear: a scent that shifts your state — emotionally, energetically, and scientifically. And in a hyper-anxious, overstimulated world, the idea that fragrance can help you reconnect with yourself isn’t whimsical — it feels like a form of luxury.
Immersive world:
Energy is everything
How Vyrao turns a belief into a world you can experience.
If the emotional pull is the brand’s heart, the immersive world is the proof: the place where Vyrao’s worldview becomes something tactile. The brand’s central idea, energy is everything, isn’t just copy on the website — it’s the through-line across every touchpoint.
Vyrao’s name comes from the Latin vireo (“I am verdant; I am vigorous; I sprout new growth”), and sets the tone for a universe built around vitality and vibration. The bottles extend that idea visually: heavy, sculptural glass in saturated, mood-coded colours. And because each fragrance represents a distinct emotional state, every scent comes with its own artistic direction.
Vyrao treats each fragrance as a world unto itself — reinforcing the idea that emotion is deeply influenced by sensorial experience.
This coherence continues through language and product. Fragrance names like Witchy Woo, Magnetic 70, Free 00, Mamajuju, and The Sixth introduce a new fragrance lexicon — less about top notes, more about states of being. Even the smaller formats are called Mini Woos, a small but telling detail into how deeply the brand commits to its vocabulary and point of view.
Marketing is where Vyrao’s world becomes unforgettable. Yasmin Sewell sits at the centre of it — not as a traditional founder-influencer, but as the embodiment of the brand’s worldview. With a following of 245k, she shares personal stories, interviews, and behind-the-scenes glimpses that reinforce the brand’s belief system as lived rather than constructed.
Campaigns push the world even further: erotic readings for their sensual scents, latex-clad imagery featuring Mia Khalifa and Isamaya Ffrench, gallery-like pop-ups, and a visual palette that mixes tactility with surrealism. Nowhere is this coherence clearer than in Vyrao’s use of sound: balloons popping, laughter, sirens, breath, heartbeats. It’s tactile, rhythmic, and surprisingly evocative. Sound becomes a way of evoking emotions before the viewer has processed anything visually — a sensory shortcut into the brand’s world.
Belonging cues:
Daily intention-setting
The symbols and behaviours that insiders adopt and signal outward, attracting the next cohort.
Vyrao’s belonging cues are subtle and intimate — a natural extension of the brand’s promise of emotional transformation. The brand’s insiders don’t talk about the scents: they talk about how they want to feel, and how the fragrance allows them to connect with their inner world.
“When I’m feeling the need to be in touch with my feminine side I choose Ludeaux.”
“It’s not about signature smells anymore, it’s about wanting to feel a certain way.”
“We were in my closet when I sprayed it over the top of us, and we all made the same sound lol - I love it, it’s magnetic”Product reviews from Vyrao.com
The brand’s rituals deepen this sense of belonging. Each fragrance comes with a recommended intention-setting practice (e.g., Spray & Say: I Wink From Within). It invites wearers to pause, breathe, and choose how they want to feel before stepping into their day. As Sewell puts it: “I wear it to amplify my energy. It’s about ritualizing your routine, stating your intentions for the day by taking a moment for yourself.” For insiders, this is more than a suggestion; it’s a shared behaviour, a small moment of self-connection that becomes a quiet bond among those who use the brand the same way.
And finally there’s the visible cue: the bottles themselves, which are saturated, sculptural, and often left out in the open (like on Yasmin’s living room hearth). They act as emotional artifacts — shorthand for those who value inner life, beauty, and ritual in equal measure.
Together, these cues are soft but unmistakable codes: belonging not through exclusivity, but through emotional literacy and the desire to feel more connected to oneself.
The Insider Playbook
Lessons in conviction, coherence, and depth for modern luxury brand builders.
Vyrao is a reminder that luxury doesn’t need to be restrained or driven by exclusivity. It can be sensual, playful, even a little ‘woo’, as long as it’s built on real conviction, expressed with unwavering coherence, and executed with depth.
Conviction: Building a brand around an unconventional worldview can be a powerful differentiator, but it only resonates when it’s genuine to the founder. Yasmin’s presence — her philosophy, her story, the way she actually lives the belief that energy is everything — is what makes Vyrao feel sincere rather than gimmicky. People don’t just buy into the scents; they buy into the clarity and authenticity of her perspective.
Coherence: Vyrao’s world works because every touchpoint reinforces the same internal logic — visuals, naming, collaborators, and even sound. The latex stretch, balloon pop, breath, and heartbeat audio cues might seem minor, but they create a sensory thread that runs through the entire universe. Coherence is what gives the brand its sense of inevitability.
Depth: Vyrao feels luxurious because the world runs deeper than aesthetics. Each fragrance isn’t simply added to the line; it’s given its own corner of the universe, with distinct imagery, colour, tone, and creative direction. That level of detail and care turns a single brand belief into a whole ecosystem — a place people want to step into, explore, and return to.
In the end, what makes Vyrao so compelling is exactly what drew me to it in the first place: it brings together elements that shouldn’t belong — latex and neuroscience, energy work and luxury — and makes them feel not only aligned, but like they were always meant to coexist.
Vyrao doesn’t try to speak to everyone, but it’s built with enough clarity and courage to resonate deeply with those seeking the emotional transformation the brand promises. And that, ultimately, is what makes a modern luxury brand magnetic: a universe so rich that it feels like a personal invitation.
More reading
Vyrao’s brand deck — 2023 (PDF)
The BoF Podcast interview with Yasmin Sewell (BoF)
Can You Sniff Your Way To Your Dream Life? (Bustle)
A tour of Yasmin Sewell’s (gorgeously green) home (Wallpaper*)
A full profile on Yasmin Sewell: The Queen Of Reinvention (Elle)
Work with Brandside: Submit an enquiry
This was such a fun read!