The Nerra collectionNerra Bath time has a very different connotation for Teyma Touati than it does for most Americans. Typically, it conjures images of a running tap filling up the tub, along with rubber duckies and bubbles. But for Touati, it brings to mind growing up in Carthage, Tunisia, where she went to the hammam with her family and practiced bathing rituals that have existed for thousands of years. The ancient ruins of the Roman baths of Antoninus—the largest in the world outside of mainland Italy—are in her hometown. With those beloved rituals essential to her culture and self-care, Touati wanted to bring them beyond the borders of Tunisia once she realized many people around the globe were unfamiliar with them. That’s why she launched Nerra in 2023.“I wanted to create something around where I grew up,” Touati says. “Nerra is modernizing Mediterranean bathing practices. I chose to go to the body care industry because we stayed super traditional with the same kind of body lotion and body washes, but there was nothing like a skincare for the body that respected the scale of bathing houses. I grew up in the Mediterranean basin with this culture of bathhouses and really taking time to take care of your body, and also the wellness side of it. I wanted to bring this cultural piece, because bathhouse rituals are an interconnected story, from Roman baths to Greek baths to North African baths, and I wanted to bring it to the world having the DNA of the Mediterranean bathhouse, but also mixing it with modern skincare science.”The Nerra Bathhouse RitualNerra Nerra combines the past and present of bathing culture into four products, The Bathhouse Ritual, that are meant to be used as a system. Each product is designed to emulate a step in a bathhouse cleansing experience, and the brand focuses on education in their marketing materials to teach American consumers about the traditional process. The first step is the Body Pre-Exfoliating Foam that loosens dead skin cells, to be scrubbed away with the Exfoliating Body Glove. Next is purifying and hydrating with the Body Wash, which moisturizes and plumps skin while deeply cleansing pores, strengthening the skin barrier and triggering cellular regeneration. Last is nourishing skin with the Dry Body Oil, made from 100% natural pure botanical oils to firm, hydrate and protect skin with a mess-free spray applicator. There is also the Body Lotion, a lightweight formula with ceramides to boost the skin barrier, peptides to firm and increase elasticity, and prebiotics to balance the microbiome. The products are available in unscented or Mediterranean-inspired scents Jasmine Wood or Citrus Wave, which have aromatherapy properties. “The traditional bathhouse routine is four steps,” Touati says. “You go to the steam room, you use the black soap to open the pores to prepare the skin for exfoliation, and then you use a glove, which is the star of the ritual, to extract all the dead skin. Then they put on a clay body mask, and the last step is putting on oil to lock in moisture. We took the first step of the black soap and created a foam with olive oil and coconut to prepare the skin for exfoliation. The glove is the first microbiome-friendly glove in the world. We made it in a German lab. The glove is going to actually protect the microbiome and not disturb it. After two hours you have the same results as an exfoliation that is 2,000 years old, with a new tool that is microbiome-friendly and respects the skin barrier. We wanted to modernize the third step, the pink clay mask that you wait for 15 minutes until it dries and then you wash it off, with a hydrating body wash with pink clay, so it's going to purify, like the traditional mask. The last step is the body oil with eight botanical oils. It's a spray format that respects the body. The Bathhouse Ritual is our best seller, and Kim Kardashian posted about it organically.”Nerra Founder, CEO and Creative Director Teyma TouatiNerra Though she grew up in Tunisia, Touati considers herself a global citizen. “I present myself as a citizen of the world because I've been everywhere,” she says. “I did business school in Tunisia and then I worked a bit in finance with fashion brands in my home country. Then I relocated to the Middle East, in Dubai, where I earned an advanced certification in cosmetic formulation. Then I relocated again to France, because Nerra is made in France and we launched the brand from there.”Touati’s global and varied background continues to inform Nerra and allows her to serve as both CEO and Creative Director. “I have my CEO cup, and I also have the creative part, because I am the formulator,” she says. “I work closely with the lab, so I oversee the formulation, science and sensoriality. We are a premium brand, so you need to think about everything—the efficacy, social impact of the product, and what we are adding and modernizing in today's world. The creative part is important to me.”As Creative Director, Touati handles everything from the packaging to their social media vision to campaign images. All of the photo shoots are her concepts. They never show faces in their imagery, much like sculptures in museums with the heads missing, adding an air of mystery. “There's a story behind every campaign,” she says. “We don't want to be just the body lotion. For me, it was the relationship between cracked skin and relating it to cracked Earth, and the idea of water and hydration. Since Nerra is very Mediterranean, and very connected to Earth and history, I like to create stories where we connect science and skin to life and wellness; it's all about the experience.”The Nerra Bathhouse RitualNerra Nerra’s packaging is intentionally simple, yet striking and sophisticated. Touati chose to work with aluminum packaging for sustainability purposes, as it’s a cornerstone of Nerra. “I'm bringing 2,000 years of bathhouse culture and I need to do it responsibly,” she says. “Aluminum is a material that is infinitely recyclable. It was a challenge to create beautiful products, but also addressing today's environmental challenges. We have a lot of certifications; we are Ecocert certified and we are also vegan and organic. You cannot be a modern brand if you are not addressing all this.” Every aluminum bottle is covered in terracotta for an earthy, Mediterranean feel. “It's a nice object you can put in your shower, you can put out for your guests,” Touati says. The line is also designed to be genderless. Touati decided to create the brand in France because Europe has the highest formulation standards, and she wanted to work with the best labs. Europe also has the toughest regulations, which was also important to her for safety. Efficacy is of the utmost importance, which is why Nerra invested in clinical studies. “Starting with the DNA of the bathhouse is important, so we took the traditional ingredients—and we know they have now proved scientifically that they are doing something—and put some new ingredients, like niacinamide, collagen and hyaluronic acid, so for me it's the combination.”Bathhouses were essentially the origin of wellness culture and Nerra aims to bring that into modern times. “I think wellness now is the new thing, because the new generation is into wellness; they're also into longevity,” Touati says. “In New York, there's a lot of new bathhouses. Today, body care is about the result and how you feel. In these bathhouses before, it was a communal space where people laughed; it was a therapy. We are bringing back what we lost throughout the ages and I'm very proud that.”