Before bottling, Kå, an esprit de Parfum, is filtered through a cellulose sheet until the liquid runs clear of sediment. “You have to remain happy,” Florian insists. “You can’t filter and be upset — you’re bound to tip over the glass.”
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Liquid Storytelling
Around the bend from Cape Point nature reserve, Florian Baumann and David Plenderleith’s natural perfumery, Très Nagual, is a secluded hub for fragrance, soap, and skincare. The pair lets HOMEY in on their unique process and recalls the love story that set it all in motion.
BEAUTY / AESTHETICS / 16.05.24
Read time / 8 mins
[01] Before bottling, Kå, an esprit de Parfum, is filtered through a cellulose sheet until the liquid runs clear of sediment. “You have to remain happy,” Florian insists. “You can’t filter and be upset — you’re bound to tip over the glass.”
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Creative Director
Photographer
Creative Director
Photographer
[01] The Big Shirt and Paperboy Bag, Project 6 SS22.
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Wild Rosemary, Cedarwood and Sage botanical bars, hand-cut by Florian, are ready to be packaged and paired with a customer. Samples come as a gift with purchase for all Très Nagual products.
Très Nagual’s very first product was a batch of Walnut & Sage bar soap, which sold out at a gathering in Denmark where David and Florian lived before settling in the Western Cape. Serendipity led them to Lalaphanzi Farm just as a vacancy opened up: a closet-size room in their cabin served as an initial production space. “We lived very simply,” says David. “We had a yellow Beetle we would drive to the Hout Bay market every weekend and trade there.” Now, five years (and a global pandemic) later, after a three-week trip to Johannesburg and Malawi, Florian proudly likens the business to a toddler learning to walk. “Très is so forgiving,” he says. “Now she runs by herself. It should be encouraging for someone starting their own business.”
“An example that you can live from doing what you love,” adds David.
“What I really appreciate about our work is that it keeps us busy,” says Florian. “It’s a constant source of joy, and asks for attention every day. It keeps me on my toes and out of trouble.”
The très in Très Nagual is French (for very), acknowledging Florian’s love for the language which originated in his birthplace, Morocco. The North African country is also the site of his earliest scent memory: a dry pavement in the summer sun. Florian’s father worked for the German government as a horticulturist, moving the family to Tunisia, Thailand, Hawaii, Taiwan and finally Malawi, exploring many a national park along the way. Florian studied cooking at Silwood School of Cookery in Cape Town, then biology in Vienna, Austria. The dream was to become an ER surgeon, to be “where you’re most needed. Situations where decisions must be made: those are the moments that inspire me.” And although fragrance formulating isn’t life-or-death, “I have lately understood, through living a life of lesser emergencies, that in the absence of one, you’ll create one. Such is the psyche: it wants to be challenged.”
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Ingredients, packaging and products on shelf in the Très Nagual lab. David and Florian make a conscious effort to avoid synthetic materials, relying on glass, paper and wood for their in-house production and packaging.
Perfumes and soap are just the beginning: incense and the Įsla room spray are thoughtful companions to the core offering. Florian and David are developing their product categories, branching out into skincare with a range of serums, balms and clays. Florian uses offcuts from his soap bars to make Tïpï, a laundry powder. They even make a deodorant and a shampoo bar, though those are not always in stock. If you’re searching for a particular product and cannot find it online, your request will be accommodated via email, or an Instagram DM.
David gets to work on the Très Nagual production table, filtering Kå and compounding resin to make incense.
During the week, the Très Nagual space is Florian and David’s production lab. From Fridays to Sundays in summer, it’s a store space, open to visitors alongside Lalaphanzi Farm’s popular Scone Shack. Although products are available online and at select stockists, the in-store experience is well worth the commute. Retail may seem at odds with the idea of feeling grounded, but the Très Nagual store conjures a profound tranquility that allows for exploration and discovery. Interaction with customers often informs Florian’s production schedule. “It should be a need,” he says of purchases. “A customer should feel understood, heard, and taken care of.”
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“It’s slow, steady and situational,” David says of the production process. “Pouring with presence becomes a mindfulness practice.”
David moved to Cape Town from Zimbabwe to study graphic design, which segued into editorial content creation and managing artist studios, most notably for Kurt Pio and Faith47. He first came across Nagual, a concept from Native American cosmology, in a book. Loosely translating to ‘the mysterious’ or ‘things unseen’, David gained a much deeper understanding of the concept through his studies in Switzerland at Kaospilot. (“Forget Harvard,” proclaims a 1996 Fast Company article. “Kaospilot is the world’s most adventurous alternative business school.”) Sanctioned as a Council Guide to teach The Original Teachings of the Delicate Lodge, David’s training allows him to channel ancient oral traditions into practical business projects and processes across disciplines. At Très Nagual, “our noses are following the scent trail,” David explains. “We’re receptive to those queues and data points [from nature and themselves] which move our hands, and move reality into bringing it into form.”
The Très Nagual production cycle prioritises circularity. Botanical offcuts find their way to the fire pit surrounded by tall cacti. The burnt fynbos is then used to fertilise a new cycle of growth.
David and Florian are intentional about keeping their business on a scale that feels manageable, choosing not to stock their products in mass-market retail environments. “That’s been our approach to doing it sustainably,” says David, “that we’re not burning out. That we’re not losing touch or the love connection with each other and what we’re doing.”
Florian and David express themselves through a unique and intuitive creative production process. All products are made from raw, natural ingredients: always a combination of oils and wild botanicals.
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David and Florian outside their home at Lalaphanzi Farm, wearing organic cotton clothing from Pure Solid 13. David wears a Fields Weekend Trouser.
David and Florian met on the beach in Scarborough, the last town on the lone road to their current residence. “Our meeting was like a collision,” David says. “Like boom — universes colliding.”
“I extended my plane ticket three times,” Florian laughs. Both were due back in Europe for studies, where they would commute between Bern and Vienna to see each other. It was a matter of months before Florian made the decision to move in with David. “I took sabbatical leave,” he clarifies. “I said, they’ll call me if they need me. I didn’t think twice.” The two have been inseparable since, incubating and building Très Nagual as an expression of their love.
Florian and David express themselves through a unique and intuitive creative production process. All products are made from raw, natural ingredients: always a combination of oils and wild botanicals. The former is often sourced in collaboration with fynbos oil expert Camilla Colley who runs a mobile distillation unit. As for the botanicals, “that we grow here and hand harvest,” says David. “I don’t know anyone else who formulates the way we do.”
On the production table, David heightens the mood with Très Nagual incense. The earthy, grassy profiles of elephant dung serve as a base for notes of Fynbos Honey and Myrrh.
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Love letters and clippings orbit an artwork by Faith47 in Florian and David’s living room.
Florian and David live and produce Très Nagual on Lalaphanzi Farm, about a kilometre away from the Cape Point National Park. Their modest cabin is directly next to the lab and store space, raising many a lens from their global clientele. But photography can feel invasive. “People are just curious about this lifestyle, living low impact,” David figures. “So when I remember that, it’s okay.”
In the fire pit, a collection of fynbos is photographed in the afternoon sun before being set alight. “Now they can return back to source,” David says.
Florian and David have a collaborative hands-on approach as Noses, the official term for a perfume artisan who curates and formulates scent. “Every product is touched by both our hands. That’s how it’s always been,” says David. “I would source everything we need and lay it out. Then Flo would hold more of the production side, the alchemy, and I would work with him in that. I design the packaging, and we would wrap it together.”
“You work to your strengths,” adds Florian, “It is a wonderful dance.”
“It’s slow, steady and situational,” David says of the production process. “You work to your strengths,” adds Florian, “It is a wonderful dance.”
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A jar of resin, used in the Åpis healing balm for its antibacterial properties.
Wordsmith Boudica Collins joined the team in 2022, studying the Très Nagual product offering to craft their poetic online descriptions. She also assists in the physical store space. “Working with David and Flo has expanded my thinking in wonderful ways,” she shares. “Très Nagual calls for a very specific practice of sensitivity and openness. It is really a matter of tuning in to ‘what is alive in you’ as David often says, and nurturing curiosity — for the world, for yourself, for others.”
Florian collects botanicals in preparation for his next batch of soap production.
“It’s liquid storytelling,” Florian muses. Each scent has a different origin tale. Kå began in David’s dreams, while Arthemis is based on a year of Florian’s botanical research. Each scent also evolves, often beyond its makers’ recognition when paired with a customer. This moment fascinates Florian: “The consciousness jumps,” he says. “Once they are theirs, they are theirs. Then I take no ownership at all. And to the best of my customers I say it doesn’t really matter what it smells like, because there are a million smells, everywhere, all the time. So you just catch one, catch one.”
“It’s infinite,” says David.
“Infinite,” Florian agrees. “No limitations.” —