In Milan, Aesop’s The Second Skin was an Immersive Sensory Experience
Aesop’s recent installation at Salone del Mobile, The Second Skin, offered a calming, sensorial experience against the backdrop of a historic church
Skin. The largest organ in the human body — and the sensory threshold between inner and outer worlds — was the starting point for a pulse-slowing installation created for Milan Design Week by inventive skincare brand Aesop.
A dialogue between ‘dermis and design’, The Second Skin was a soothing sanctuary away from the city’s crowds in the sacred serenity of the 15th-century Chiesa del Carmine in the heart of Brera.
Tactile, sensory and steeped in ritual, the installation was rooted in the aromatic layers of Aesop’s new Eleos Nourishing Body Cleanser, defined by its woody, herbaceous and lightly spicy fragrance and its smooth imprint.
In a poetic echo of Milan’s famed doorways and entrances, the brand’s installation, an official Sensory Patron at this year’s Salone del Mobile, aimed to create a ‘threshold’ between outside and in, just like the skin of a human body.
Incense burned at the entrance as visitors passed through white curtains before entering a stone space where the atmosphere shifted into aromatic stillness, as Eleos’s three key ingredients — cedar atlas, patchouli and clove — stood distilled in laboratory-style glassware on a table.
The transitionary journey continued into the cloisters. Here, echoing a signature feature of Aesop’s stores, a washing ritual unfolded at metal sinks, with guests rinsing their hands with the Eleos cleanser.
A door at the end of the cloisters led to the heart of the experience, inside the holy confines of the sacristy. Here, in near-darkness, the senses slowly perceived a central structure, made from cedar panels with mortar, containing Eleos Aromatique Hand Balm.
Inspired by the notion of ‘the formulation becoming the material’, the lotion created an organic structural texture on the panels, skin-like and aromatic, with staff regularly massaging the product into surfaces throughout the event.
From this tactile surface, a human hand holding a sponge emerged from an opening and wiped the surrounding area, while a film installation of dancers choreographed by Nayoung Kim played in the background.
The atmosphere deepened at the front of the sacristy: here, on top of a wooden table containing the priest’s sacred robes sat a primitive ‘offering’ of a tangle of cedar branches — the fresh, natural aroma lingering in the air, as candles flickered in darkness.
Back outside beneath blue skies, the sensory experience continued in the central courtyard, transected by the lines of a 16-metre table by British designer Sebastian Cox, the top from a single cedar tree supported by split-trunk legs of sweet chestnut. The table displayed 13 torso-shaped plaster moulds by Paris-based artist Victoria Punturere, each regularly sprayed with one of Aesop’s 13 different fragrances, infusing the air with layered aromas.
The final chapter was a hidden room called the Capsule of Respite, created in collaboration with Dutch gallery Morentz. A richly layered interior of Italian design classics (from Gio Ponti’s 1960s Parco Dei Principi floor lamp to a 1970s Afra and Tobia Scarpa dining table) was the serene setting for private hand and arm massages using the Eleos balm.
A scattering of white chairs in the courtyard was the perfect spot for a moment of rest and reflection. Here. ‘In this noisy world, we love to have spiritual buildings as our references. These places make you behave in a different way,’ explains Marianne Lardilleux, Aesop’s global retail design director. ‘We wanted to offer a sensorial and non-conformist experience around Eleos and pay homage to handwork as well, as you can see from the table. We’ve made a symbiosis between our product and the architecture — and only at Salone could we do something like this.’
Text by Danielle Demetriou
