Soul Journey: Perfect Imperfections Founder Jasmine Banks

When a person is doing the work of their soul, you can hear it in their voice.

This is true of Jasmine Banks, who founded Perfect Imperfections six years ago with the mission of empowering women to appreciate daily life and the rituals of self-care with safe, chemical-free soaps, scrubs, lotions, and more.

“I don’t lead this business,” she says, “the business leads me. It’s always evolving. What I wanted when I first started is not where I am currently, it’s not where I’m going to be; wherever it leads me, that’s where I’m going to go.”

A seismic shift in her worldview set Jasmine on her current path. Following the loss of her mother to cancer, she started researching the ingredients of the toiletries in her own medicine cabinet. “I started googling,” she says, “and found many of them labeled ‘harmful in small doses.’ And these were products that I had used my whole life because my parents used them.”

This link between past and present is the beating heart of Perfect Imperfections. When Jasmine reminisces about her mother’s beauty routines—the scent of her lotion, the billowing clouds of talcum powder—she conjures images that send you back in time to watching your own parents and the awe you felt for the mysterious rituals of adulthood.

These deep childhood memories inspired Jasmine to create her own products that carry on those traditions with responsibly made products with ingredients that are safe and nourishing.

Jasmine took Perfect Imperfections to the next level by participating in the UpStart entrepreneurship program, plugging in to WARF’s statewide network of resources and support. “I’m a creative,” Jasmine says, “so what UpStart did for me, in addition to creating this enormous network, was validate me.” She’s proud of the way her business has grown largely by word of mouth, changing and adapting along with her understanding of her craft and evolving in response to her customers.

This responsiveness to her customers’ questions and needs led to a desire for deeper understanding of the herbs she’s using to craft her products. So in the spring of 2022, she traveled to the two-day Gullah Geechee Herbal Gathering for Black and Indigenous herbalists on Johns Island, South Carolina.

“It’s hard to put into words,” Jasmine says about the experience. She’d attended other herbalism classes where she felt the focus was on cramming in as much factual knowledge as possible. “I couldn’t find my fit [in those spaces]; my soul was telling me I wasn’t in the right place. At Gullah Geechee, not only my soul but the people around me let me know that I was in the right place.”

She came away feeling like she’d been given the gift of time and grace to focus on her journey of discovery, of taking that journey “one plant at a time” – the very same way she hopes we all approach our own self-care.

Find Jasmine’s products online at perfectimperfections608.org, on the shelves at Little Luxuries on State Street, and at the new Madison Public Market when it opens in early 2024.