Aesop Marks the Launch of Above Us, Steorra with a Celestial Shoreditch Installation

Photography - Raphaelle Orphelin

Words - Tajinder Hayer

Fragrance and design are rarely separate in the world of Aesop. For the launch of its latest Eau de Parfum, Above Us, Steorra, the Australian brand staged an experience that sits somewhere between exhibition and installation, hosted at the historic Shoreditch Tab Centre.

The two-day takeover coincided neatly with London Design Festival, but Aesop’s lens here is less about material craft and more about atmosphere. Inside the venue, the grand hall was reimagined into a star-strewn space, echoing the fragrance’s celestial title. Visitors were invited not just to sample scent, but to inhabit it.

At the heart of the installation is a collaboration with artist Jack Coulter, whose abstract paintings bring a visual counterpart to the perfume’s expansive character. His work—gestural, textured, and deeply expressive—creates a dialogue between scent and sight. In keeping with the ephemeral nature of both, guests are offered signed, limited-edition prints alongside complimentary fragrance vials, available while stocks lasted.

The effect was part gallery, part dreamscape. As with much of Aesop’s work, the boundaries between commerce, culture, and craft are blurred. A perfume isn’t simply a product; it’s a narrative, a piece of design, and in this case, an invitation to pause beneath imagined constellations.

Above Us, Steorra itself is conceived as a fragrance that reflects the quiet intensity of night skies. It’s an Eau de Parfum designed for those who see scent not as an afterthought but as part of the wardrobe—layered with as much consideration as knitwear or tailoring. Aesop’s approach to fragrance is always distinct from the overtly commercial end of perfumery: cerebral, architectural, and precise. This launch continues that tradition, aligning the olfactory with the experiential.

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