When Yolanda Owens gives clients her signature facial, they take one look at the platter of lettuce, cucumbers and avocado and ask the same question: "Can I eat it?"
"I take it as a compliment because it means they have connected with what I said: If it is good enough to eat, it is good enough to put on your skin," said Owens, founder of IWI Fresh, a line of skin care made with fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs. Owens' message -- that what we put on our bodies is as important as what we put in our bodies -- is one she hopes to spread through the recently opened Pampered Nail and Body Spa in Atlanta.
Long before skin care went the way of nanotechnologies, beauty enthusiasts were mixing masks made of yeast and yogurt, sloughing dry skin with oatmeal scrubs and soothing tired eyes with cucumber slices. In the hands of a few ambitious Atlantans such as Owens, those efforts have moved out of the kitchen and are aimed at taking on the mainstream ... sort of.
"IWI, for sure, is not for everyone," said Owens, acknowledging the twin challenges of cost and quality control that confront any maker of food-grade personal care products. Customers have encouraged Owens, who sells her products online and in the spa, to take a shot at mass distribution, but "I don't want to sacrifice the integrity of the product," she said.
Owens said her grandmother taught her the finer points of gardening and the healing powers of food. When Owens, a former engineer, was laid off in 2003, she launched IWI Fresh using produce grown in her own and other local gardens. The resulting products, which include a $45 face cream made with carrots and a $33 body scrub made with brown sugar, lime juice and a variety of oils, are available online, as are mini countertop refrigerators designed to keep the products fresh.
For the kitchen aesthetician, quality control is a must, said Michael Warshaw, a cosmetic chemist and CEO of Savannah-based MW Labs. "You have to be careful about microorganisms ... because the medium you have built up in the product that is nutritious is also nutritious for the bugs," he said.
Warshaw, who once owned an Atlanta spa where he would create skin care from juiced-down beets, cucumbers and carrots mixed with vitamins and congealed in a seaweed base, said plant foods are filled with vital nutrients, and if they are fresh, cleaned and used daily, there is little chance of contamination.
The need for such strict oversight is exactly the kind of environment in which mom and pop shops, which work in small batch quantities, can thrive.
Julian Huxley, founder of Elava Botanik, an Atlanta-based line of hair care made with fruit pulp, is well-versed in the delicate balance of quantity and quality.
"I'm still making one bottle at a time by myself, but ... I have machinery now to pump it in the bottle, so I can actually produce quite a lot," said Huxley.
Huxley's hair smoothies -- creamy yogurtlike mixtures with ingredients such as mango, papaya or avocado in shampoos and conditioners -- are packaged in recycled containers for $19 online. A 10-month "fresh until" date is to guarantee effectiveness.
Clients, such as CNN's Sanjay Gupta, have raved about Huxley's products, but gaining wide acceptance has proved elusive. Huxley said he spends his days jumping on his bike with a backpack full of product and going door to door.
"I am quirky, but I think people think I've jumped off the deep end," he said. "You have to educate people to a different way of thinking."
All signs indicate that people are coming around, but they also are demanding a level of transparency that some companies are not able to offer.
In a recent issue of Organic Spa Magazine, a listing of almost 500 organic and natural companies showed just more than 100 have some form of certification. Atlanta's own Hollybeth's Naturals was among the names such as Burt's Bees and Yes to Carrots that all have at least one certification, but a surprising number of well-known companies, such as Bare Escentuals and California Baby, are not certified by any of eight major organizations.
"Whether it is a commercially prepared product or a small cosmetic product done in a boutique kind of way, you have to know who is doing it," Warshaw said. "The consumer needs to be well read, informed and educated."
Which is why Owens has set yet another goal for herself. She hopes to create a skin care garden center where clients can handpick the fruits and vegetable suited to their skin, then make the products on site.
Is it practical? Time will tell, but Owens thinks she has a shot. "People want to do better," she said. "Places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are booming. That lets you know the needle is moving."
