The Subtle Magic of Scent | In Studio with Très Nagual

In conversation with David Plenderleith and Florian Baumann, the hands behind Très Nagual – an all-natural, holistic perfumery based in Cape Point. From their unassuming home base between the aloes, across from Scarborough’s iconic Scone Shack, you’ll find the pair producing small-batch, consciously crafted soaps and scents.

Find their custom-made liquid hand soaps now in our stores.

“Smell this”

The door is open to the sun. There are aloes and a purple-grey mountain. It is late afternoon, the in-between stage when the air settles into stillness. In a place where time seems to have slowed down.

David picks up a bottle of scent. He sprays the air. The fine mist catches the slow light. And instantly the room is redolent with a rich perfume. The kind that makes you close your eyes. Take a breath.

“Dry incense.”

Holy basil. Immortelle. Sandalwood.

“It’s like earth.”

There’s something about scent that shifts the energy in the room now. A softening. An opening. An ease. This is play. This is letting go. This is how friends are made.

“Scent is such a delicate perceptual door. It is much more subliminal, almost subconscious, in the way the messages come through. It can captivate. It can entice. It can shun. It holds this etheric feeling, because you can’t really see it. Present, and then fleeting. On a molecular level, natural scent is free to move. And the moment someone thinks they understand scent, it changes.”

“Shapeshifting?”

“Shapeshifting, in a way. But yet it’s formless. So there’s no form to shift.”

People amble into the shop. We fall quiet and watch. The easing, the opening, is happening for others too.

“Shifts happen within a realm of feeling. I’ve seen it so many times. Someone may enter the space, hunched, or not happy. Tense. After some time with Florian, they come out lighter and lifted. In some ways it’s the product speaking. But it’s also the transmission that happens. And for our work to uplift, that is essentially the way that aromatherapy works in healing the mind, body and emotions. But we’re doing it in a more contemporary way – rather than in treatment rooms behind closed doors, we want to make it accessible. Scent becomes an ambience that is created.”

It’s quite easy to see now. This is a place of feeling. Of learning. And perhaps unlearning too. This is experience, more than retail. In fact, the very idea that something is being sold here seems to slip away. What’s taking place is much more. The undoing, the connecting, the softening. One could easily be swept through the open doors on a yellow breeze, and casually stay forever.

“What surprises you the most about what happens here?”

“What surprises me is that people come,” says Florian. “And that is such a pleasure. It is a journey. Plants, and their essences, their memories, their function – they become your own. I like to see the bigger picture, and to take more into account than just the perfume. To look at the ‘why, how, when, and for what reason’? And I like to ask people, ‘How is your mother?’

Perhaps this says it all. The point of connection. The intimacy that can be created between strangers that soon become friends.

We are standing outside now, looking in. A girl comes to the door. She’s ridden her bicycle here. Her name is Fran. She greets Florian warmly and goes in. A new scent journey is about to begin.

“Another surprise is that whenever I am cutting soap I get a lot of people crowded around me, and they say, ‘Oh, that’s amazing! Is that a big bar of soap? I never thought that’s how it’s made.’”

But of course. So little process happens in plain sight. The same recognition that happens here, happens in the Mungo Mill. Faces turn in wonder. Shifts happen. Thoughts tick in time with the looms.

“Flo’s background is in biology,” David tells me. “He holds a scientific approach to formulation. He also trained as a chef at Silwood in Cape Town. So there’s that unique combination of gastronomy, textures, taste and smell, with the understanding of plants and their function. I would say the dance with us is that every product has both our hands. Florian brings a sense of compassionate craftsmanship; logic and thoroughness. I feel we really inspire each other and lead each other to new places of expression in the way that we co-create. We work to our strengths, and allow a space for the other to step into.”

We move inside. Now we are standing before a lineage of scents. Different batches of ‘Nefertūm.’ There are notes of lime, Amyris and blue lotus. Subtle variances in each.

“Try this one, Fran. The new batch.”

“What is interesting is that the new Nefertum lasts so long,” she says. “It’s so good. I sprayed it the other day, then I went for a bath and when I woke up I still had this scent – it was still there but it had changed. The batch that I get from your town shop is amazing. It has more of a floral base.”

We’re on to something here. The threads draw closer together. It’s about the nature of change. The changes in nature. It’s a reminder of the perfectly imperfect natural rhythms we should rest in.

“If I follow the cycles, some batches are very different from the others. The immortelle, for example, that grows out at Hemel-en-Aarde, is always different. The last batch is from a new field. The previous batch from a 3-year-old field. And so the oil is very different. But then I explain to the customers that this is the natural world, and it should be so. Once that is communicated, it actually becomes a quality unsurpassed.”

The understanding of seasonal shifts. The awareness of change. The sense of harmony. It’s a refreshing exhale in a world where uniformity has become the standard. A world obsessed with an illusion of perfection. David and Florian are small-batch, craft producers. Much like we are. They understand cycles and variances and the importance of flow. Of the mark of the maker. The mark of the material.

Another scent is introduced.

“What do you see?”

“It’s the forest.”

“Another layer to Florian is his understanding of the mind. The mechanisms of thinking. He formulates, creating an image, and then builds a scent from that place.”

“It’s wet, like the forest. Like moss, and deep, rich greens. And ferns.”

“Your words, they give me inspiration. Because now I see that I have permission to go deeper into the underground and maybe make it a little more soily too. Because you seem comfortable there, you see? So now I have direction for my next batch. That’s how seasons happen, how cycles come about. And that is my greatest freedom. So the next time you come, I’ll say, ‘Smell this – now it’s like wet terracotta.”

“This is one of my favourites,” says David, picking up Savon à Barbe. It’s a play of organic tea tree from Zimbabwe, Pure Bergamot, Virginian Cedarwood, lots of Patchouli and a touch of Sandalwood. It’s very clean – there’s a lightness. I get an image of a day at the beach – being sun kissed and salty. A little bit of suncream.”

“White shells.”

“Mmmm.”

“An aspect of the work is in living in receptivity to not only our needs, or nature’s, but someone else’s. That takes it up to their depth – from their perspective. It’s listening, in the way we formulate.”

More people come, and go, and play. Apprehensive, reserved at first. And then the lessening. The loosening. The easing into peace. The quiet healing.

“Matching scent to personality is another layer of experience. Flo has become very good at this – reading people and matching them to a scent. Perhaps something on the playful side; fruity and floral. Or we might talk about the intention of the scent, and see if that is an energy they want to step into.”

It is the closing of the light now. Three hours have passed quietly. The mountain grows its purple shadow.

“There are mornings here where the aloes are full of dew. They look like the cosmos is resting inside of them. Luminous. And that energy, that vitality, that bit of freshness that doesn’t get tiring. That’s uplifting, and happy, and very medicinal – that is Hildegard. For me Hildegard’s image is like the first light of a new day.”

And what a perfect end. As the light of this one closes. It’s in the art of looking, isn’t it?

“There is that growing sense of consciousness. People are awakening to it. Becoming conscious of your surroundings, of your actions, of your feelings. There’s the practical side – turning around the bottle, looking at the label. Thinking about what I put on my skin, the cloth I use. They say that where attention goes, energy flows. What you look at, what you seek, is seeking you.”

A last look at that wise mountain. The glowing aloes. The magic is complete.

Find Très Nagual at their stores in Cape Point and Gardens, South Africa.

Or pay a visit to one of our stores in Cape Town, Joburg or Plettenberg Bay, South Africa to discover one of their unique liquid hand soaps, custom made for Mungo using all-natural botanicals.