Tell Me Everything

I was living in Singapore when I formulated what would become our now award-winning face serum. I was terribly lonely — a young mother adrift in the identity-less haze of new motherhood, knowing absolutely no one and too tired to find new friendships. Then, just before we returned to London, I had a chance encounter with a wonderful woman with wild hair (or a wild woman with wonderful hair), perfectly put together in pink, laughing raucously at a policeman. We exchanged a quick smile before she was whisked away by one of her children saying, “Daddy has lost the boys!”

The next day, she sent me a message on Instagram — she followed me, recognised me and asked if I’d like to get a coffee. And from that coffee began a defining friendship. Whether over letters, WhatsApps, phone calls, or slumped in the leather banquettes of lovely London restaurants, we have managed to knit an Elizabeth Strout-worthy long-distance relationship that revolves around love, laughter, tears and always the invitation to: “Tell me everything...” 

The past few years have been the hardest and most trying of my life — and yet, somehow, the most rewarding, certainly the most love-filled. When everything falls apart, the universe has a marvellous way of letting certain relationships take root and bloom in overlooked corners. I will never forget cancelling dinner one evening with my angel-like friend Rosie, too exhausted to even explain, and yet thirty minutes later, finding her at my front door, weighed down with food shopping and flowers, urging me upstairs to settle the children so she could cook me a meal.

When you let one wall down, others follow — and connections begin to form. You realise very quickly that everybody is hurting, in some way, shape or form. Everyone carries their own burden. And in a world like this, kindness goes a long way. Not judging someone goes a long way. Listening, simply being there — these are the threads that, woven together, can make something that looks and feels like love.

But maybe the word is bigger than love. Sally Mann writes about affection in her latest book Art Work, borrowing from Wendell Berry, who describes affection as “more far-reaching and durable than watered-down love — encompassing mercy, forbearance, respect, authentic hope, and sympathy.” Phil Stutz, too, reminds us that “everything important in life involves relationship…other people can help us, or we can help them, at a profound level. And it’s not about averting loneliness — it’s about creating something real, with real substance.”

I think the affection Berry describes is what Stutz is getting at. In his “Life Force” triangle of happiness, relationship with others forms the core — held between our relationship with body and our relationship with self. How telling that to reach our full potential, we must connect authentically with others. It’s why isolation is the cruellest punishment. And it’s why I’ve come to believe that building genuine community isn’t just important — it’s essential. It should be the heart of any truly meaningful brand, especially one devoted to helping us find and embody our truest sense of beauty.

Vanderohe has always been about more than products. At its heart, it has been an offering: a way to help you feel held in hard times — as it did for me when I first created it. With our relaunch, and our new website, I want to take that intention further —  to make Vanderohe not just a brand, but a community built on affection: compassion, support, and authenticity made tangible.

I’m continually moved by the messages that find their way to me — a customer writing from a hospital bed to say she feels calm before surgery because she’s just applied her face serum; others sharing quiet moments of gratitude, or encouragement. These small exchanges remind me again and again of the strength of gentle hands — and the way we can hold one another up simply by showing up.

And that, more than anything, is what I hope Vanderohe continues to be: a place where kindness and compassion flow easily, where you can be met with gentleness and where connection becomes its own kind of healing and empowerment.