The Aromatic
Botany of Xinú

(Mexico Special) The company’s name comes from the Otomi word for ‘nose’—a sound as spare and elegant as the bottles it marks. “Xinú held the perfect correspondence between symbol and sound,” says Cadena. “Short, simple, and deeply aligned with the spirit of the brand.”

The idea for Xinú germinated in Peña’s childhood, spent in gardens with her grandmother, learning to identify flowers by scent. “Childhood memories sparked the dream of building a tangible universe of scent and sensation,” she shares. Years later, as she and Cadena traveled across and beyond Mexico in search of botanical inspiration, they realized how many of the world’s celebrated perfumes contained ingredients native to their country. “Mexico is our home, and we are deeply inspired by its abundance,” she says. “We saw an open space to explore scent through the lens of a traveling seed—one that, like nature itself, knows no borders.”

If nature is the perfume atelier’s protagonist, architecture sets its stage. “Space became the means to express scent,” says Esrawe, whose eponymous studio led the design of Xinú’s store interiors—in Mexico City’s Polanco and Juárez neighborhoods, one in Mérida on the Yucatán Peninsula, and another in the artist village of San Miguel de Allende.

“We wanted the brand to feel like a sanctuary, a holistic experience where scent could guide the visitor, revealing the vastness and richness of our culture and sharing it with the world,” he notes. The Polanco flagship is nestled in a verdant backyard garden, in a building that formerly housed an auto repair shop. Transformed into a circular pavilion, the space features sustainable construction, soft light, and an organic flow. It is a living landscape of sensory encounter—“a sensory journey rather than a conventional display,” as Esrawe puts it.

For Xinú’s founders, poetry is the starting point for design—in Peña’s words, “the poetry of how layers of conversation unfold between scent, design, craft, and space.” The team works with perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux, the Mexico City-based, globally acclaimed nose behind such scents as Tom Ford’s Neroli Portofino and Dolce & Gabbana’s Velvet Collection. His nuanced knowledge of Mexican flora enables bold moves, such as Monstera, which marks the plant’s first appearance in perfumery. Cadena speaks of the impetus to bottle its pineapple-inflected scent, described on the brand’s website as a leaf that has been snapped open. “The plant deserved an ovation—so visually powerful with its vivid colors, bold fruit, and undeniable vibrancy,” he says. “We wanted to capture the essence of its greenery, the damp jungle floor, and its wild, irreverent spirit.”

Beyond personal fragrance, Xinú’s range extends into candles, home aromas, soaps, and moisturizers, with sustainability the common denominator. Candles come in reusable ‘fire containers’ shaped by artisans in Mexico and El Salvador. “We continuously seek ways to reuse and repurpose—not only within our internal production processes, but also in how we inspire conscious decisions in the hands of the final consumer,” Cadena says. “In an age of digital abundance, it is craftsmanship that grounds us—bringing us back to the basics,” notes Peña. Beyond its exquisite olfactory experience, Xinú invites full sensory engagement.

“That, to us, is the most inspiring part,” she adds. “You smell, you touch, you see, and in doing so, you connect in the most deeply human way.”