The Laundress on Making Laundry Feel Luxe

Laundry isn’t sexy, but what if it could be? Aside from being a dirty job (literally), many products in the category aren’t doing us any favors. It’s filled with mass-market brands that, despite being effective, don’t exactly stimulate the senses. They’re housed in bulky, primary-color bottles with equally bright liquid inside, and the scents are a far cry from fine fragrances. Laundering clothes is a chore, and the products certainly make it feel that way. But one brand in particular has led the charge in making laundry feel a little more luxurious, and it’s none other than The Laundress.

Founded in 2004 by friends Gwen Whiting and Lindsey Boyd, who worked in the fashion industry, The Laundress was one of the first “high-end” laundry detergent brands, with luxury at its core. “After their initial careers at Chanel and Ralph Lauren, they came together and commiserated over the cost of dry-cleaning for caring for those special wardrobe investment pieces,” Hannah Yokoji, head of marketing for the brand, tells POPSUGAR. The women had amassed these beautiful wardrobes at sample sales over the years and wanted a solution that allowed them to care for their pieces at home, just like the rest of their clothes. From their studies of fiber science at Cornell, they knew that most items didn’t need to be dry-cleaned if they had the proper formulas and techniques. And so The Laundress was born.

“The Laundress is about elevating the everyday chore of doing laundry and taking care of your home,” Yokoji says. The brand does so by combining its fabric-care expertise with fine fragrances, which creates a sensorial experience that dares to make doing laundry feel a little bit like self-care. Everything, from the bottles to the labels and the marketing material, feels high-end.

Though a handful of other brands have since followed suit, The Laundress was at the forefront of this category, building it into what it is today. Ahead, hear more from Yokoji on the brand’s unique approach to developing those scents we can’t get enough of and more.

POPSUGAR: What set The Laundress apart from other laundry brands on the market when it launched?

Hannah Yokoji: At the time, there was not a start-to-finish scent experience. You had a different scent for your stain remover, for your detergent, for your fabric softener, for your starch. And so you ended up having a very disjointed fabric experience and laundry experience. And then, on top of that, the way that we developed fragrance. It really is a fragrance-first and fragrance-forward product-development process versus, I often think, what happens is brands start with a detergent and the formula and then pull from an existing fragrance library. For us, it’s a very bespoke development.

PS: Can you tell me about the brand’s approach to fragrance?

HY: We wanted to start with a fine-fragrance experience. We continue to be on the lookout, doing trend checks in Paris or New York, seeing what’s out there in the fine-fragrance world and then adapting that into a fabric-care and laundry format versus the other way around. That’s why we’re known for those iconic fragrances that really don’t smell like a laundry or home-care brand — they smell like, first and foremost, a fine-fragrance experience.

PS: When the brand first launched, what scents did it debut?

HY: There was the Classic scent, and that is our core, signature, everyday fragrance. That was really developed for your start-to-finish needs. Then we also had Lady, which is from the delicate wash; it’s a floral, bergamot, ylang-ylang, gardenia, musk-forward scent. We also had Cedar, which was developed specifically for the care of wool and cashmere. It’s meant to be a modern take on the traditional woody and cedar scent. Many of the scents that you see in our portfolio now are actually part of the original 13 products that the brand had launched with from the start.

PS: What was the inspiration for the Classic scent found in the Signature Detergent?

HY: Classic is our top-selling scent still to this day, and it was designed as the ultimate clean laundry smell, like when you think about the nostalgia of hanging your linens to dry in the breeze. It felt unisex but also wasn’t so overwhelming that it competed with your personal fragrance — that was really the beginning of that concept. It has quite a lot of different notes, but really, you notice the notes of lily of the valley, jasmine, sweet musk, sandalwood, and a touch of citrus. We’ve seen in the market there are a lot of “clean linen” scents, but for us, this was taking it quite a few notches above that and thinking, what would you consider a signature fragrance for your linens? You want those sorts of ozonic notes, meaning inspired by the breeze and fresh air.

PS: Where does the inspiration for your newer fragrances come from?

HY: A lot of our portfolio is centered around floral and musk-forward scents. But that’s not to say that we don’t experiment, especially with our limited additions. When you think about laundry, you want it to still smell fresh, but fresh can mean many different things. Isle is one of our more recent fragrances, and it’s meant to be a bit more unisex in the sense that it has a bit more basil, mint, and watery notes. It’s definitely meant to still smell fresh, but it’s transportive in the way that it sort of reminds you of an aquatic fragrance. As we continue to develop fragrances and when we’re briefing and working with the perfumers, we’re always looking for the end result to signal that your garment is clean and fresh.

PS: Do you have a favorite scent from the collection?

HY: I see our portfolio, of course, like children, but for me, it’s like when I’m in the mood for something, I’ll opt for that. I love Classic ($26) because it’s nostalgic to me, and I typically use it with my everyday laundry. But if I want something that’s a bit more sensorial, I really love No. 723 ($26). It’s a really lovely, spicy rose scent. It has Damask rose as the heart of the fragrance, and it’s surrounded by geranium, jasmine, and lily of the valley, but it’s not as sweet as you typically think of a floral because it’s grounded with a lot of layers of spice, wood, and amber. It really warms up that fragrance.