Fine Perfume, for Your Underarms? Meet To My Ships

November 26 | 5 minute read

Words by Christie Sinclair

Deodorant has had a (much-needed) makeover. Eau de parfum is no longer only for your pulse points, thanks to To My Ships.

Daniel Bense, former Head of Commercial at Aesop and Managing Director of Sunspel, couldn’t understand why the industry wasn’t developing personal care with the same innovation as other categories. “Why has one of the most intimate and essential categories, deodorant, been so neglected?” he asks. “We wanted to change that by treating it with the same care and imagination usually reserved for skincare or fragrance.” It is, after all, one of the most intimate and the most essential elements of self-care.

Creating his luxury line of deodorants under the brand To My Ships was almost subversive, Bense reveals, explaining that it began with the idea to treat the armpit, of all places, “with genuine respect”. It involved bringing together the science of skincare and the elegance of haute parfumerie to create something that is both useful and beautiful. The result, he notes, is firstly odour protection, but it’s also providing the wearer with a sense of confidence before they step out into the world.

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Respecting armpits, for Bense, meant looking closely at formulation. The area is warm, moist and highly sensitive, and the microbiome here needs more support than most people realise. “We start with very specific constraints on what ingredients we would use and would not use, and spent an unreasonable amount of time researching and testing different deodorising actives,” reveals Bense. In parallel, he worked with perfumer Céline Barel in Grasse to develop a highly natural fine fragrance, which he says is “unique and unexpected in this category”.

After many iterations and extensive testing, the result is a clinically proven, dermatologically tested set of deodorants made with naturally-derived ingredients and a “unique, seductive eau de parfum that emerged from the process”. We know what you’re thinking – natural deodorant. But these formulas actually perform. “Our deodorant is clinically proven for 24 hours of effectiveness and is suitable for sensitive skin,” he tells us.

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While Bense isn’t the first to give personal care a luxury spin, he might be the only one that has succeeded in turning it into something more akin to a fine perfume. The scents, fresh and green, earthy Marjoram and citrusy Polygonum, are a big part of why To My Ships has earned a quiet cult following. Beautifully layered and understated, they’re far from the usual ‘fresh linen’ or ‘cool breeze’ you’d find in the supermarket aisles. It’s no surprise when you understand Bense’s own relationship to scent. “Living in London, I am confronted with scent daily, and the world smells, though not always as you might imagine. Personal fragrance has become too loud, too overbearing, too artificial.”

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Even the product names carry a sense of luxury. Of The Gods, Stand Up Bravely and the brand name itself have been lifted from the ancient Greek poem The Iliad, by Homer. “The Iliad is full of chaos and conflict, yet it is also full of beauty,” Bense says. “I was drawn to that tension, the way beauty can be found in disorder, and it continues to shape To My Ships.”

And while the focus is bringing luxury to armpits, the experience doesn’t end there. Each scent is available across an entire wardrobe of body wash, deodorant and eau de parfum, allowing you to layer the same fragrance from shower to the final spritz.