We caught up with SŚAINT founders Elle Wallace and Ciara Mahoney to talk scent, skin and the art of making something you want to wear every day. After all, sometimes it’s the little things that set the tone for the whole day.
Since launching SŚAINT, the pair have built a world around fragrance, one that moves between perfume, clothing and now body care. Their latest release, The Everyday, takes the idea of scent a little further. Rather than perfume being the final step, it becomes something you can build from the shower onwards, layering fragrance onto clean, moisturised skin and letting it become a big part of you and how you are remembered.
SŚAINT began with a shared obsession.
Elle and Ciara, lifelong friends and former international flight attendants, had spent years travelling the world and collecting the scents, places and experiences that stayed with them long after they had left.
Asian markets. Middle Eastern souks. The Australian outback. These places became part of their visual and sensory reference points, eventually finding their way into the fragrances they began creating together.
“We were obsessed with fragrance and its ability to transport you to a place, a person, a feeling or a moment in time,” says Elle.
It is a fitting place for SŚAINT to have started. In 2020, when much of the world had stopped travelling, the pair began developing their first fragrances. What started in Elle’s garage on the Central Coast quickly grew beyond the walls of the space, with the first four scents taking around a year to develop.
The original idea was fairly simple: make fragrance that felt different.
“We wanted to create a fragrance that felt less traditional and more instinctive,” says Elle. “Something genderless and a little unexpected, with each scent designed to evoke a mood rather than fit neatly into a category.”
That instinct still feels central to SŚAINT. There is no great interest in telling you what a fragrance is supposed to be. Instead, the scents are built around a feeling and left open enough for the person wearing them to make them their own.
The SŚAINT scent
You may already know the scent. Perhaps it’s SMOKESHOW, with its smoky woods, spice, chestnut and vanilla. Or TWENTY TWO, where bergamot, incense, myrrh, amber, vanilla and musk come together in something warmer and more mysterious.
Neither feels particularly interested in being easily categorised, which is probably part of their appeal. They are the kind of fragrances you might smell once and struggle to put your finger on exactly what it is you like about them.
That open-ended approach has also allowed SŚAINT to play with what fragrance can sit alongside.
Recent collaborations have seen the brand step further into fashion and design, including its collaboration with Australian eyewear label SHEVOKE. The partnership brought together a SŚAINT fragrance with a limited-edition pair of sunglasses, described by the brands as the “final layer”.
I’d say it feels very SŚAINT.
Fragrance doesn’t exist in isolation. It is part of how you get dressed, how you leave the house, how you remember a place or person and how you want to feel that day.
Layering from the shower
The Everyday is SŚAINT’s latest exploration of that idea.
The Hand & Body Wash and Lotion were created around the belief that fragrance doesn’t need to begin with perfume. In fact, the best place to start might be much closer to the skin.
“We’ve always believed the key to a beautiful, long-lasting scent is layering,” says Elle. “That layering starts with body care.”
The idea is less about adding another step and more about making the steps already there work a little harder. Clean skin, moisturiser, then fragrance. A base layer before the perfume that eventually becomes the scent you carry with you.
The Everyday carries SŚAINT’s Coconut & Ylang fragrance, combining creamy coconut with delicate ylang ylang. The Hand & Body Wash creates a soft, creamy lather, while the lotion is designed to feel nourishing and lightweight, absorbing into the skin without leaving anything heavy behind.
For Ciara, making the products feel good was just as important as how they smelled.
“I really wanted the products to feel as luxurious as they smell,” she says. “It was important to us that the formulas felt nourishing and lightweight on the skin, and were a joy to use every day.”
There is a simplicity to the idea that feels quite refreshing. The body care isn’t trying to replace perfume or convince you that you need a complicated new ritual. It simply gives you another way to wear scent.
Start with Coconut & Ylang in the shower, then layer something else over the top. TWENTY TWO. SMOKESHOW. A favourite from the SŚAINT collection.
Making room for the everyday
That sense of freedom has always been part of the brand. As SŚAINT has grown, its world has expanded from perfume into clothing and now body care, but the original thinking has remained remarkably consistent.
“Whether it’s a fragrance, a tracksuit or a body wash, everything we create is thoughtfully crafted and designed to feel personal,” says Elle.
For two founders who are also mothers and business owners, there is something practical behind that approach, too. Neither is interested in a ten-step routine that looks beautiful on paper but never makes it into real life.
“As busy mums and business owners, Ciara and I don’t have time for a ten-step routine,” says Elle. “To me, an effective routine is about a few quality products you genuinely love using, rather than a long list of steps.”
It is perhaps why The Everyday feels like a natural extension of SŚAINT rather than a new direction. The brand has always been interested in the sensory details that make something feel personal. The new body care simply brings that thinking closer to the skin.
And that is what SŚAINT has understood from the beginning.
A fragrance is never just a fragrance.
It is the perfume you wore on a particular holiday. The smell of someone’s shirt. A hotel lobby. A summer afternoon. Something you catch in the air that takes you somewhere before you have even had time to work out where.
Scent has a way of becoming part of us without asking permission.
SŚAINT has spent the past few years building a world around that feeling. The Everyday is simply another layer.
