About five years ago, on a visit to Hanoi, my hometown, I met with a friend at a music venue. Her rave pack, the more I thought about it, was very intentional: sunglasses, hand fans, water bottle, and a small container of dried herbs that gave an immediate cooling sensation when you inhaled. I thought, how wholesome. Or dare I say, radical.
I brought the container back to New York with me and carried it everywhere. It then became a permanent object on my desk. Urban living comes with its own particular kind of pressure. In between calls, I'd take quick breaks with my herbal inhaler. The stress relief was immediate, and it cost nothing but a breath. Some days I’d find comfort in the heat of a sauna, but after each session, I immediately reached for that calming inhaler. A friend asked me why I haven't started making my own. “Oh, it’s too trendy these days,” I laughed.
But the idea stuck with me. What really bothers me about inhalers currently available on the market is the quality. They’re usually cased in cheap plastic and mass produced in factories. When news broke that a batch from a major brand was contaminated, I knew that I was going to keep using my homemade produce, and most importantly, I was going to make it properly.
I still wondered: does the world really need another brand right now? I have always been suspicious of objects that exist only to be sold. My day job has always lived inside that tension: building things for the market while holding onto the belief that what gets made should be worth making. AN ORI had to pass that test before anything else. It had to be not just useful, not just beautiful, but honest in the way that only things made with genuine conviction can be. That question stayed with me for a long time, until I found myself deep in the middle of making something with an almost unreasonable amount of manual labor.
The making of AN ORI
It started with the desire to hold something grounding and intimate. I wanted to use a natural material—wood was an obvious yet difficult choice, and being stubborn helped. After many rounds of development, I found a way to make a natural aromatherapy inhaler entirely out of wood, including the screw part. The pod is lined with natural beeswax to make it waterproof. For the scent, I worked with an artist who has spent years in aromatherapy to develop the formula, built from botanicals and essential oils, some being native to the north of Vietnam (I will tell you more about the ingredients in another post; the stories are so fascinating). Everything about the AN ORI herbal inhaler is assembled by hand, and the human touch is behind every detail. There are moments when I feel slightly absurd doing this in the age of AI—but that is exactly the point. There is a beauty in making something by hand when everything seems to be moving in the opposite direction. And I intend to preserve that beauty.
Why now?
I started AN ORI in a moment when it felt like we had become very good at taking care of ourselves in ways that are easy to photograph. The one that doesn't require documentation or an audience, however, can feel harder to reach.
"Healing" is the word I keep coming back to, even though the wellness industry has made it complicated. What I mean by it is simpler than what the industry means; I mean the small, repeated act of breathing that can calm your nervous system; the ordinary maintenance of being a person in a demanding world.
This is AN ORI
AN ORI is an herbal inhaler with a point of view. I approached it the way I approach any creative work: with the belief that what gets made carries the energy of how it was made, or that the human hand leaves something behind in the object it shapes. There is a difference between something produced and something created, and the person holding it can feel that difference even when they can't name it.
The name carries its own logic. AN means inner peace in Vietnamese, a nod to my origins. ORI is a chosen word; in Hebrew it means light, in Yoruba it means head, and is often understood as inner consciousness or intuition. Together they point toward the same idea: sometimes all you need is to take a deep breath to return to your calm inner self.
This is the accumulated attention of everyone whose hands have touched it on its way to yours. I love this object, and I hope you will too.
