This past week, I’ve been thinking about cleansing — not just the physical ritual, but an act of returning: releasing what no longer serves us to make space for what does.
It’s something I’ve felt deeply while working through the long process of rebranding Vanderohe. It’s taken me a year and a half to get here — not because the work was particularly complex, but because I found it so hard to let go. I went through three long and expensive design iterations before I was able to fully strip away the identity I had held onto for so long. But in that process, and when I finally stopped trying so hard, I found something unexpected: clarity, creative freedom and a renewed sense of purpose.
There’s a line from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One’s Own that sums it up quite nicely:
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. When you let go of the frantic search for validation, you find yourself exactly where you are meant to be, with the tools you need to go forward. It's from this place of quiet assurance that the most beautiful things emerge."
This issue is about that space — the one we create when we cleanse, pare back and allow room for stillness. Whether through ritual, reflection, or the physical act of sweating it out, cleansing helps us reconnect with our own root. And from there, everything grows.
Olivia x
BTS
After a long wait, I’ve finally held the first prototypes of our new packaging. The rebranding process has been deeply personal and, at times, deeply uncomfortable. It forced me to cleanse away an identity I had become attached to.
We’ve removed all colour, stripped back the noise and in its place, we’ve added just one small touchpoint: a mark that I designed to symbolise a moment of connection. For me, it signifies a return to the essential, which is what Vanderohe is all about.
Roots
Late summer is the perfect time to start light pruning in the garden. It’s when many shrubs, flowering plants like roses, and herbs like lavender and thyme can be trimmed back to encourage a final flush of growth before autumn. Deadheading also stops the plant from wasting energy on seed production, redirecting it instead to root strength and resilience.
I still find it difficult to cut down flowering branches. There’s something about snipping off something that looks so alive and beautiful that feels wrong. But over time, I’ve learned that if I don’t, the plant struggles. It becomes tangled, heavy and overgrown and it pulls the whole plant down into the bed. With a little trust and restraint, that hard cut allows it to stay upright and bloom more fully and freely.
This is the essence of seasonal cleansing. Whether in your garden or in your daily habits, small acts of removal can yield powerful regeneration. Sometimes, letting go is the most generous thing we can do for what we want to thrive.
Body
In traditional hammams, cleansing was never just about the body — it's a sacred act of purification. Within those monastic, echoing spaces, as you're gently and thoroughly scrubbed with soap, it's more than just layers of the day (and skin!) that's sloughed away.
To recreate the process, I’ve been mixing a simple exfoliating blend: mineral-rich salt, our Exfoliating Powder, our Purifying Cleansing Oil, and a Sasawashi cloth to work it into the skin. The salt stimulates circulation and draws out impurities. The powder gently refines and the oil seals in moisture. The cloth turns the whole experience into something tactile, grounding and intentional.
Long Haul
For most of my life, sweating felt incidental — something that happened during exercise, or on a hot day. I never gave it much thought. But after living with Long Covid, I came to realise how precious it is. And how essential!
When my body stopped functioning the way it used to, even the ability to sweat disappeared. It was as if my internal systems had stalled, and with them, the sense of vitality that comes from a body in flow. So when sweating finally returned (after daily infrared sauna for about four weeks), it felt miraculous. Life-affirming, even.
Sweat is one of the body’s most powerful cleansing tools. It’s how we release heavy metals, mold toxins and chemical buildup. It supports the lymphatic system, regulates temperature and connects us to our animal instincts — to the primal intelligence of the body doing exactly what it was designed to do.
If you're not fortunate enough to be sweating it out on a beautiful beach somewhere this summer, opt for gentle movement in the sun, warm baths with magnesium salts, a sauna, or simply taking time to recalibrate so that your system gets the rest it needs to keep this detox pathway open.
Mind
Cleansing the mind can be as powerful as cleansing the body. In Rich Roll’s conversation with Jennifer Pastiloff, she speaks candidly about losing her father as a child, how that grief distorted her sense of identity and how she slowly began to rewrite that story. One of her most resonant phrases is: "Your inner asshole is not telling you the truth."That voice in your head that criticises, doubts and undermines you is just noise. And cleansing the mind is about daring to silence it.What if the most radical act of healing is subtractive? A return to remembering who you really are.
