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MY LOVE FOR all things Aesop began with a candle. After a friend gifted me one of the company’s gorgeous Ptolemy Aromatique votives, I quickly became obsessed, flooding my home with a variety of Aesop’s oil blends, candles, and room sprays. I then moved on to their grooming products, making my bathroom feel like some sort of finely turned-out apothecary.

Founded in Australia in 1987, Aesop has cultivated a devoted global following thanks in large part to its aesthetic — a self-described “sustainable and intelligent design” that skews slightly clinical in appearance — and to largely plant-based formulations that feel scientific in their derivation. The experience of visiting an Aesop boutique is a similarly pharmaceutical experience, characterized by an endless variety of almost identically packaged potions, and a staff of consultants eager to connect you with the products most perfectly suited to your physiology and personality. Adding to the almost medicinal mystique of their products, Aesop stores provide a suitably austere environment for shopping — an architectural swirl of warm woods, dramatic lighting, and artfully arranged rows of Aesop’s impeccably designed bottles. For the unfamiliar, an Aesop store can feel a little intimidating, even somewhat confusing, considering there is little to differentiate the labeling on their various offerings. But for the devoted (and the myriad boutique hotels around the world in which I have used these products), Aesop offers a perfect union of form and function — beautifully conceived products in astutely designed vessels.

At any given time, my home is something akin to an Aesop testing lab, with a variety of new fragrances and personal-care products being given a trial run. Recent additions include a bottle of the brand’s new clove-meets-spearmint mouthwash and matching toothpaste, a vial of Parsley Seed Anti-Oxidant Intense Serum, and a new personal favorite, Aesop’s Marrakech Intense Parfum. While all of Aesop’s products deliver on their promise of performance, the brand’s fragrances are the main selling point for me. The products that have taken up permanent residence in my house are generally the ones with scents I can’t get enough of — herbaceous, woody, and nature-adjacent in a kind of complicated, inexplicable way. They smell like a version of the future I want to live in.