A Little Bit Wylder: The Story Behind the Talc-Free Lavender Body Powder in the Little Tea Tins

Wylder via Be Wyld Child's new small-batch capture of Lavender Body Dusting Powder

This powder started as an experiment. I'd heard that years ago, some perfumers made powder perfumes, and I was drawn to the idea — I wanted to capture natural material in every medium I could, not just oils and tinctures and it seemed similar to the concept of enfleurage, minus the oils.

It became something more useful almost by accident. A girlfriend of mine mentioned, out of nowhere, that she'd bought a body powder after not using one in years, and how cooling it was in the summer. Something shifted for me in that moment — I stopped thinking of it as only a perfume and started building it as something functional too: a cooling, silky, talc-free lavender body powder that also happened to carry a real, natural scent.

This is one of the first pieces of Wylder — the line I've been quietly building for four years out of wild-harvesting and slow, hands-on processes. Wylder isn't made the way Be Wyld Child Classics are. It leans on enfleurage, tincturing, fermenting, distilling, and infusing — ways of capturing nature rather than sourcing it ready-made.

What's Actually In It

The base is tapioca and arrowroot powder — both cooling and absorbent — along with kaolin clay, which softens skin while it absorbs, and a hint of aluminum-free sodium bicarbonate to freshen. Then come the plant materials and oils.

In the spirit of an old-fashioned powder perfume, I started by using certain plants to fix the powder — to help it actually hold a floral scent instead of losing it. I began layering fresh flowers into it: star jasmine and honeysuckle in one batch, lavender in another. The next day, the powder smelled absolutely gorgeous. But it didn't hold. That flower season ended before I'd solved it.

I didn't know it at the time, but what I was fumbling toward already had a name — powder enfleurage, a technique French perfumers used centuries ago, before oil and pomade enfleurage even existed.

Then it was time to harvest our own lavender here in Ojai — the fuzzy stems and leaves carry such a beautiful scent on their own. Some of you remember the old Ojai Lavender Festival — the one that used to fill Libbey Park before it moved to Santa Barbara. What's left here now is smaller, ours, and still very much alive. I packed our lavender into the powder and sealed it for a full year, shaking it on occassion.

When I finally opened it, it was truly beautiful. I added a touch of lavender essential oil, locally-distilled from Ojai lavender, because layering a scent across multiple registers and forms— the raw plant and the distilled oil together — tends to make it hold better than either alone.

Why This Container

I wanted something that felt like Be Wyld Child, and I try to avoid unnecessary plastic wherever I can. These little tea containers hold the powder beautifully and tuck a small puff right into the lid — small enough to travel with, but still elegant, and it doesn't take much of this powder to work.

Honestly, they also remind me of the little powder containers my grandmother kept on her dressing table back in Jackson, Mississippi — the ridges, the way the puff tucks in, the kind of click as the lid fits onto the body. Sweet, a little nostalgic, and surprisingly functional.

How We Actually Use It

My sister and I have been testing this for two months and we're both hooked. We use it in place of deodorant on normal, non-scorching days. She's found it freshens up shoes beautifully. I reach for it for chafing — thighs, bra straps — and even for a bit of cooling at the bottom of the bed on a warm night. One of my favorite new discoveries is how delightful it is sprinkled in gloves, both reuseable and fashionable ones. It makes them easier to slide on and they smell wonderful. Mostly though, I use it after a shower or bath, or just to freshen up whenever the day calls for it.

Only 15 Exist — and That's the Point

This particular batch will never be exactly repeated. As long as I'm in Ojai, there will always be more lavender — I've already started a tincture from this year's plant that will show up in a future perfume — but each season's harvest is different, picked at a different time, carrying something a little different in it.

I think of Wylder more like snapshot in time than a product line — something you compare across seasons and years like a vintage of wine, rather than manufactured synthetics meant to mimic nature and be identical every time. This is closer to an art than a formula. And there's something real in that closeness to the land: what you're wearing has touched, and endured, everything the plant has — long starlit summer nights, cold winter survival. I like to think some of that resilience carries into your skin and body as you breathe it, slowly, infused energy right along with the scent.

Next year's lavender dusting powder batch is already underway, arriving in 2027. And right now I'm deep in a 2-year honeysuckle powder — a much more complex process, and a real next chapter in the Wylder lineage.

If you'd like one of these fifteen, Shop the Lavender Body Powder

More of Wylder is coming. This is just the first small piece of it finding its way out into the world.

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