On ancient heroes, modern rituals, and the art of smelling good.
There are few objects less likely to inspire poetry than that of a deodorant. It lives in bathroom cabinets, disappears into gym bags, and performs its duties most successfully when nobody notices it. Daniel Bense, founder of To My Ships, apparently thought this was a rather uninspiring fate for an everyday essential.
Drawing on nearly twelve years at Aesop and a subsequent role at Sunspel, Bense approached personal care with a different ambition: to make the ordinary feel extraordinary without making it feel unnecessarily complicated.
The name comes from Homer’s The Iliad, an epic populated by gods, warriors, wounded pride and men with rather serious anger-management issues. It is an unlikely reference for a brand concerned with personal hygiene. Then again, Homer understood something that modern life occasionally forgets. Being human is inherently a messy business.
To My Ships brings this ancient sensibility into the contemporary bathroom, where the daily struggle is less likely to involve a siege of Troy than a crowded train, an overheated office or a nervous first date. Its fragrances, understated packaging and considered approach to recycled materials suggest that personal care need not be merely functional. Even the smallest ritual can become an occasion for pleasure.
The brand’s design, developed in collaboration with Milan-based studio Formafantasma, reflects this philosophy. Recycled aluminium and attention to material detail and consumption brings questions of longevity into a category, in disposable and refillable solutions. The result is an object intended to be considered as carefully as it is used.
Naturally, there is a delicious contradiction in making deodorant an object of contemplation. The luxury industry has spent years persuading us that even the most mundane necessities deserve a premium price and a compelling origin story. At what point does thoughtfulness become another thing we are being sold?
Most mornings, after all, unfold on autopilot. We reach for the same products, repeat the same gestures, and move through familiar routines while our minds are already somewhere else, composing emails, anticipating meetings, mentally negotiating the day ahead. The bathroom becomes less a place of preparation than a pit stop between sleep and obligation. Perhaps the real luxury is not another beautifully packaged object, but the rare experience of actually noticing what we are doing. A scent, a texture, a moment of pause, small interruptions to the machinery of habit. The question is whether a brand can genuinely invite us to pay attention, or whether even mindfulness has become something we are expected to purchase.
Perhaps the answer lies in restraint. To My Ships is most compelling when it invites a heap of curiosity rather than demanding outright admiration, treating fragrance and design as experiences rather than status symbols.
Bense has circumnavigated a serious climbing accident that prompted him to reconsider his priorities and pursue the idea of building his own company. It is tempting to turn this into a familiar entrepreneurial tale of catastrophe followed by revelation. Real life, thankfully, is rarely so neatly packaged.
What remains is a modest but appealing proposition, that the objects accompanying us through ordinary life deserve a little more contemplation.
Achilles had his heel. We have our insecurities, our morning routines and the small preparations that help us face the world. Nobody needs an epic poem to get dressed. But if a little poetry to start the day can make it feel less ordinary, perhaps the ancient Greeks were onto something after all.
*Information referenced from 'to my ships' webpage.
