Agnès Varda, Luca Guadagnino and Wim Wenders: why Aesop’s love affair with cinema is more than skin-deep

Stepping inside an Aesop store is an immersive and deeply sensory experience shaped by Marianne Lardilleux, the brand’s director of global retail design, who has looked to cinema as the inspiration for many of Aesop’s brick and mortar spaces across the globe.

In the Knox, Texas store, Lardilleux took colour cues from Wim Wenders’ Paris Texas (1984). In the case of the Zurich Airport boutique, she referred to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In 2018 and 2019, Aesop even partnered with Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name (2017) and Challengers (2024), on interiors for retail locations in Rome’s Piazza di San Lorenzo and London’s Piccadilly Arcade.

First look: Aesop’s cinematic Christmas campaign

In fact, throughout the brand’s lexicon, which spans almost 40 years, you’ll find a nod to the art of cinema in even the smallest of details, including the naming of products. (‘Breathless: A Bout de Souffle’, a hydrating body oil, references Jean Luc Godard’s 1960 New Wave masterpiece, for example).

‘You go to the cinema instead of watching a movie on your TV because you want to be immersed, to have all your senses awakened,’ Lardilleux explains from her studio, which is adorned with mood boards and a visual inventory of furniture placed in Aesop stores. ‘When we build a new space, we’re thinking of the five senses. I feel you are looking for a similar experience when entering the cinema – this immersion in a new territory.’

Aesop’s 2024 Christmas campaign also draws upon these themes, with three limited-edition gift kits – ‘Screen 1’, ‘Screen 2’ and ‘Screen 3’ – each containing an edit of Aesop’s star products.

In Screen 1, there are four formulations to ‘scent the scene’ in your home, such as the ‘Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash’ and ‘Resurrection Aromatique Hand Balm’. For Screen 2, you’ll find a ‘trilogy’ of body-care items from the Geranium Leaf range: ‘Geranium Leaf Body Cleanser’, ‘Geranium Leaf Body Scrub’ and ‘Geranium Leaf Body Balm’. Finally, Screen 3 focuses on a ‘three-part saga for both hands and body’, including the ‘Eleos Aromatique Hand Balm’.

The packaging for the kits is a novel take on the season of light, printed with scans of super 8, 16mm and 35mm film to create a representation of celluloid. Accompanying this is a Christmas campaign film titled The Soap Service, which was also shot on 35mm, to maintain this textural continuity. Depicting moments of gift-giving, it also appears as vignettes in the window installations of select Aesop stores, with creative direction overseen by Lardilleux.

Her connection with visual arts and culture (which have always been central to Aesop’s DNA) stems from her background. Cutting her teeth in architectural practice before making the move to retail via Louis Vuitton and Céline, she joined Aesop in 2016. ‘[In moving from architecture into retail] I discovered a whole new world and also realised how much attention could be paid to detail,’ she says. ‘When you design a building, [those things] are constrained by time and budget. But in retail, each door handle, button or fabric matters – and so I completely fell in love with it.’

To take the Knox store in Texas as an example, aside from the obvious location reference to Wenders’ cult classic, the film’s characters manifest in the scale of the architectural design of the space. (It was conceived to channel images of ‘human fragility against the huge landscape of Texas‘ in Paris Texas, Lardilleux notes).

Ultimately, the effect of all of these cinematic touches, large and small, is more significant than something pleasing to look at, too, intended to set the tone for the impassioned discussion of art and film among Aesop’s following. ‘It's not just for the beauty of it,’ Lardilleux concludes. ‘All the stories we’re building with film is to spark conversation, which I see as another immersive layer that not only responds to a space but fills it too.’

Aesop’s list of films to watch over the frantic festive period

Watch Aesop’s Christmas campaign short The Soap Service above. Below, find the brand’s selection of films to ‘provide tranquil moments of inspiration during the frantic festive period’.

The Adventure (1960) by Michelangelo Antonioni

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) by Victor Erice

Paris is Burning (1990) by Jennie Livingston

The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) by Tran Anh Hung

Beau Travail (1999) by Claire Denis

Unknown Pleasures (2002) by Jia Zhangke

2046 (2004) by Wong Kar Wai

I Am Love (2009) by Luca Guadagnino

The Great Beauty (2013) by Paolo Sorrentino

Faces Places (2017) by Agnès Varda and JR

Monos (2019) by Agnès Varda and JR

Great Freedom (2021) by Sebastian Miese

The Eight Mountains (2022) by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch

La Chimera (2023) by Alice Rohrwacher

Perfect Days (2024) by Wim Wenders

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