As a fashion buyer and creative force at retail institutions like Browns and Liberty, Yasmin Sewell has long been tuned into aesthetics and the power of intuition. But it was during a moment of personal reset, that her intuition propelled her from fashion into an entirely new world: the business of beauty.
Founded in 2021, her fragrance brand Vyrao blends traditional perfumery with spiritual practices like Reiki, kinesiology, and neuroscience.
“When I was in fashion, what made me successful was tapping into my intuition and tapping into energy, which is everything I’ve created now. I was born quite psychic; I’ve always been able to connect with many things, and I used that ability to discover the designers at Browns,” Sewell shared. “That feeling is what I’ve lived by my whole life. It’s what’s led me to where I am now. And actually, what I believe I’ve done is bottled that into fragrance.”
At The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2025, Sewell sat down with BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed to discuss why she built a business rooted in energy, how she learned to manufacture fragrance from scratch, and why intuition is an underrated superpower in business.
Key Insights:
- Yasmin Sewell transitioned from fashion to beauty not as a rejection of her previous career but rather as an extension of her intuitive abilities, driven by a significant personal shift following her divorce. "When I was in fashion, what made me successful was tapping into my intuition and tapping into energy, which is everything that I've created now,” she explained.
- Vyrao was born from a deeply personal vision Sewell experienced during a transitional period in her life. "I heard this voice saying, 'everything needs to be green'. ... That's all I could hear. It was like a speaker I couldn't turn off," she recounted. "I sat there and Vyrao came to me as an absolute vision from somewhere else."
- The fragrance brand now sits in a distinct position in the market, combining fragrance formulation with emotional and spiritual wellbeing, backed by neuroscience. "Every single plant and flower and every single fragrance is chosen for how it makes you feel… Now we work with neuroscience. It's proven to trigger certain emotions in the brain," she explained.
- Sewell emphasises the power of intuition as her primary guide, despite the challenges of navigating a business world dominated by analytical thinking. "I tend to lead with the gut... I'm sort of 98% intuition, 2% common sense," she said, describing how this has shaped Vyrao’s strategic direction and her interactions with investors. "I lead with intuition, and I use the brain as a tool. I don’t think the brain can take us that far – for me, it doesn’t.”
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