Search for Yasmin Sewell, and you will find a fashion star with a perfume empire. Look up Yasmin Abdallah instead, and the same woman appears, plus a famous ex-husband. One woman answers to both of those names.
Sewell is the surname of the actor Rufus Sewell. She married him in 1999, and the marriage ended in 2000. She kept his name for work anyway, then spent twenty-five years making it her own.
In September 2026, she sold a majority stake in Vyrao, her fragrance brand. She stayed on to lead it, under the name she borrowed and built. This is the story of the woman behind both names.
Quick Bio Box
| Birth name | Yasmin Abdallah |
| Known as | Yasmin Sewell |
| Born | Around 1975, Sydney, Australia |
| Age | About 51 in 2026 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Heritage | Lebanese-Australian |
| Education | Left school at 15, by her own account |
| Known for | Fashion buyer and creative leader; founder of Vyrao |
| Career homes | Yasmin Cho, Browns, Liberty London, Style.com, Farfetch |
| Brands founded | Yasmin Cho (1998), Être Cécile (co-founded), Vyrao (2021) |
| Vyrao today | Majority-owned by Tresalis since September 2026; she remains Chief Brand Officer |
| First husband | Rufus Sewell, actor (married 1999, divorced 2000) |
| Later partner | Kyle Robinson, fashion designer |
| Children | Two sons, Renzo and Knox |
| Based in | London, United Kingdom |
| Social media | Instagram @yasminsewell, around 240,000 followers |
| Net worth | Not officially known |
Who Is Yasmin Abdallah?
Yasmin Abdallah is an Australian fashion entrepreneur who works as Yasmin Sewell. For twenty-five years, she shaped what British fashion stores sold. Buyers with her record are rare, and founders with her story are rarer.
She is also known as the first wife of actor Rufus Sewell. That marriage lasted less than a year, back in 1999. Her career, meanwhile, has run for more than two decades since then.
Today she leads Vyrao, a fragrance house built on energy and mood. In September 2026, a new beauty platform bought a majority stake in it. First, though, her story starts far from perfume counters.
Why Is She Called Yasmin Sewell?
The short answer is a wedding in March 1999. She married the British actor Rufus Sewell that spring. When the marriage ended, she simply kept the surname for work.
Keeping it turned out to be a smart business move. Her biggest career years all happened after the divorce. The Browns, Liberty and Farfetch years were all built under the name Sewell.
So the name on her brands is not really his name anymore. It is the name she made valuable herself. Yasmin Abdallah is the woman; Yasmin Sewell is the signature she built.
What Is Yasmin Abdallah’s Age?
Reports place her birth in Sydney in about 1975. That makes her around 51 years old in 2026. Her exact birth date has never been shared in public.
Her own words support that timeline well. In a 2014 interview, she described herself as a 38-year-old mother. A woman who was 38 in 2014 was born in 1975 or 1976.
That fits everything else in her record. She opened her first shop at 22, in 1998. She arrived in London at 19, in the mid-1990s. The dates line up from every side.
Some websites, however, print her age as 59 in 2026. That figure is simple bad maths, as a later section shows. A 1975 birth cannot produce 59 in the year 2026.
From Sydney to London at Nineteen
Her start in life came with very little polish. She grew up in Sydney, in a Lebanese-Australian family. The suburb of Randwick is named in profiles as her home ground.
By her own account, she left school at fifteen. She started working straight away, with no long study plan. One early job was as a personal assistant at a Sydney property agency.
At nineteen, she moved across the world to London. She was desperate to enter fashion, in her own telling. She did not yet know what a fashion career even looked like.
One of her first London jobs was dressing windows at Browns. The famous store’s grand style, however, troubled her at the time. She felt high fashion treated ordinary customers with cold, snobby service.
That discomfort later became her founding idea. She dreamed of a store where every visitor felt welcome. Within a few years, she had built exactly that store herself.
The Boutique That Made Her Name: Yasmin Cho
In 1998, aged about twenty-two, she opened her own shop. It stood in SoHo, in the middle of London. She named it Yasmin Cho, using her middle name.
The shop stocked bold, young labels early. Rick Owens and Miguel Adrover were among its names. Courtney Love was counted among its famous early customers.
Big fashion voices noticed the little store quickly. The New York Times praised it as one of the world’s most influential boutiques. For a school leaver from Sydney, it was a remarkable verdict.
Yasmin Cho also taught her the skill she became famous for. She learned to trust her instincts about clothes completely. Buyers across London soon wanted that same instinct working for them.
The Buyer Years: Browns, Liberty and Farfetch
After her boutique, the biggest names in retail hired her eye. Her career through those years reads like a tour of British fashion power:
- Browns (from 2005): Retail legend Joan Burstein chose her as head buyer. She had once dressed the same store’s windows as a teenager.
- Liberty London: She later became chief creative officer of the historic store. She is widely credited with waking the sleepy department store up.
- Style.com: In the mid-2010s, she served as fashion director of the Condé Nast platform.
- Farfetch (from 2017): She joined the global luxury platform as vice president of style and creative.
Through those years, one gift kept showing up. She spotted young designers before the rest of fashion did. Christopher Kane, Roksanda and Jonathan Anderson all won her early backing.
She backed them with orders, not just kind words. A buyer who orders early can change a designer’s whole future. Several of her early picks are now global fashion names.
Her own wardrobe drew cameras throughout those years. Photographers waited for her outside the fashion shows each season. Profiles still rank her among London fashion’s most photographed women. Her personal style became a second, silent form of advertising.
In 2018, she left her last big fashion role. A quarter-century of trend cycles had finally worn thin. What she did next surprised even people who knew her well.
Être Cécile: The Label She Built With Kyle Robinson
Alongside the big jobs, she also built a label of her own. Être Cécile launched in the early 2010s with designer Kyle Robinson. The brand sold easy, Paris-flavoured casual luxury. Its name is French for “to be Cécile,” a dream Parisian girl.
The label became a quiet favourite of fashion insiders. Its sweatshirts and simple prints spread through the industry. She designed for it herself while holding senior jobs elsewhere.
Kyle Robinson was also her partner in life. The couple had two sons together, named Renzo and Knox. Profiles report that the relationship later came to an end.
Her family life, however, stayed mostly out of her interviews. She spoke about work, energy and clothes far more than home. That habit makes confirmed details about her sons fairly scarce.
The Nine-Month Marriage to Rufus Sewell
Her first marriage is still the line strangers know best. She met Rufus Sewell at nineteen, soon after reaching London. They dated for about four years before marrying.
The wedding came in March 1999, when she was about twenty-three. The marriage then fell apart within the same year. Their divorce was complete in 2000, after roughly nine months of marriage.
Neither side sold the story to the press. In later quotes, she blamed her own young state of mind. She called her younger self, bluntly, “a bit messed up” at the time.
No children came from that short marriage. Both of them then rebuilt their lives in public view. He remarried twice more; she built the career described above.
Who Is Rufus Sewell?
Her ex-husband’s fame explains much of the lasting curiosity about her. Rufus Frederik Sewell was born on October 29, 1967, in London. He became one of Britain’s most respected screen actors.
His famous roles run across three decades of work. He played Count Adhemar in A Knight’s Tale in 2001. He played Lord Melbourne in Victoria and John Smith in The Man in the High Castle.
Since 2023, he has starred as Hal Wyler in The Diplomat. The Netflix drama returned for a fourth season in October 2026. His performance also earned him an Emmy nomination in 2026. In 2024, he played Prince Andrew in the Netflix film Scoop.
His private life stayed busy as well. He married producer Amy Gardner in 2004, and they had a son. In July 2024, he married actress Vivian Benitez at a castle in Wales.
Building Vyrao: Perfume With a Pulse
She began developing the idea back in 2019. In May 2021, she launched the brand that now defines her. Vyrao began with five fragrances, sold first at Selfridges. Each scent was built around a feeling, not a fashion season.
The first names showed the idea at once. Witchy Woo was made to spark courage and creativity. Later came Sun Rae for joy and Magnetic 70 for grounding energy.
Every Vyrao bottle carries a small crystal inside. It is a Herkimer diamond, charged with healing energy by a specialist. That detail sounds unusual, but it sits at the heart of her method. The brand’s candles carry the same idea in a metal V charm.
Her spiritual training is formal, not a marketing costume. She trained in Reiki from her early twenties onward. She also studied Integrative Quantum Medicine and flower remedies over the years. Her public bio today lists her first as an “energy worker.”
Energy work ran beside her fashion career for years. Vyrao finally merged the two halves of her life into one product. She tells the brand’s birth story with one strange detail. During her years of change, she heard a clear inner voice. It told her that everything needed to be green. Vyrao’s bottles, boxes and shops have lived in green ever since.
Science joined the story soon after the launch. The Sixth, her mindfulness scent, was developed with fragrance science experts. Their program studies how scents trigger emotions in the brain.
Big money followed the idea quickly. Estée Lauder’s venture arm took a minority stake in 2023. In 2024, an L Catterton fund led another funding round.
The brand grew to hundreds of stores across more than twenty countries. That spread includes her native Australia, where Mecca stocked it early. Liberty, the store she once helped lead, placed The Sixth in its 2025 Beauty Advent Calendar.
Where Is Yasmin Abdallah Now?
In October 2025, Vyrao opened its first physical space. The six-week New York pop-up mixed scent with light and sound. She greeted guests at the door herself, by one visitor’s account.
New scents have kept arriving as well. Ludeaux and Ludatrix joined the line in 2025. She also spoke at the Business of Beauty Global Forum in 2025.
Then came the biggest business move of all. Sale rumours had circled the brand since the summer of 2026. In September 2026, those rumours became a completed deal.
A new platform called Tresalis bought a majority stake in Vyrao. Tresalis is backed by Athos, a German family office based in Munich. Vyrao became the new platform’s very first acquisition.
She did not walk away from her creation, however. Instead, she stays on as founder, chief brand officer and shareholder. She still leads the brand’s creative and strategic direction herself. Her own verdict was warm, calling the match complete synergy.
The price of the deal was never disclosed in public. Her earlier investors kept minority stakes beside her own share. The brand she built in five years now has a powerful new owner.
Public life continues around the deal as well. On October 22, 2026, she attended a jewellery launch dinner in SoHo, London. Actors and models filled the guest list around her there.
Her base is still London, where she has lived for decades. Her Instagram shares energy work, scent launches and daily rituals. About 240,000 followers track the account under her professional name.
What Makes Yasmin Abdallah Different?
Most celebrity ex-wives fade once the marriage ends. She did the opposite of fading after 2000. Her real career started almost exactly when the marriage stopped.
The name story captures her perfectly. She kept the surname of a nine-month marriage. Then she spent twenty-five years making that name mean her own work.
Her path also breaks the usual rules of success. She left school at fifteen with no qualifications. She still reached the top buying jobs in British fashion, then founded a global brand.
And her method never changed across any of it. She trusted instinct over spreadsheets in every role. Fashion called it a great eye; she calls it energy and intuition.
Numbers and Stories That Do Not Hold Up
Her fame mix invites sloppy copying between websites. Several popular claims about her collapse under simple checking. A few deserve a clear answer here.
The 59-Year-Old Who Cannot Exist
One biography site calls her 59 years old in 2026. The same site gives her birth year as 1975. Those two lines cannot both be true at once.
Simple maths settles the question at once. A person born in 1975 turns 51 in 2026. The 59 figure is an error that other pages may yet repeat.
The Two-Week Marriage
Another old profile claims her marriage lasted two weeks. Almost every other record gives about nine months instead. The marriage began in March 1999 and ended in 2000.
A two-week marriage could not fit those dates. The nine-month version matches the wedding and divorce years. The two-week claim should be treated as a plain error.
Net Worth Numbers From Nowhere
Sites price her fortune at very different numbers. The printed guesses run from $500,000 to $4 million. That is an eightfold gap for the same woman and the same career.
Her true wealth has never been published anywhere. Vyrao’s funding rounds were real, but they priced the company, not her. The price of its 2026 sale was never disclosed either. No honest number for her personal fortune exists.
Outdated Job Titles
Some profiles still call her Style.com’s current fashion director. That job belonged to the mid-2010s, a decade ago. She left her final major fashion role in 2018, by her own account.
Pages that present old roles as current mislead readers. Her present-day work is Vyrao, plus her energy practice. Anything else belongs to her career history, not her diary today.
The Third Child in Family Posts
Family posts in 2023 showed a younger boy named Gene. A partner named Craig also appeared in those family images. Some sites list Gene as her third son on that basis.
No interview has ever confirmed those details, however. Her two documented sons are Renzo and Knox, with Kyle Robinson. The rest belongs in the unconfirmed column for now.
FAQs
Who is Yasmin Abdallah?
She is an Australian fashion entrepreneur, known professionally as Yasmin Sewell. She led buying and creative teams at Browns, Liberty and Farfetch. In 2021, she founded the fragrance brand Vyrao in London.
Why is Yasmin Abdallah called Yasmin Sewell?
Sewell is the surname of her first husband, actor Rufus Sewell. They married in 1999 and divorced in 2000. She kept the name for work, and all her famous career years used it.
How old is Yasmin Abdallah?
She was born in Sydney in about 1975. That makes her around 51 years old in 2026. Her own 2014 interview, describing her as 38, fits that timeline.
What is Vyrao?
Vyrao is the fragrance brand she founded in May 2021. Its scents are built around moods and energy, with a crystal in each bottle. Estée Lauder’s venture arm invested in the brand in 2023. In September 2026, the platform Tresalis bought a majority stake in it.
Does Yasmin Abdallah have children?
Yes. She has two sons, Renzo and Knox, with designer Kyle Robinson. Family posts have also shown a younger boy named Gene. His details have never been confirmed in her interviews.
Conclusion
Yasmin Abdallah’s story is a lesson in owning a name. A short marriage gave her a surname at twenty-three. She then spent twenty-five years making that surname stand for her own record.
The record itself needs no decoration at all. A school leaver became London’s trusted fashion eye. The same woman then built a fragrance brand that giants invested in.
In 2026, her ex-husband fills screens in a hit drama’s new season. Meanwhile, she has just sold a majority stake in the company she founded. Two names, two careers, one shared year. Her own story, though, is still rising.
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