The natural beauty trend doesn't seem to be one that is going away anytime soon. Customers want to use natural products because they are better for the environment, less harsh on the skin, or simply because they like to be able to easily read and identify a product's ingredients. Sellers who provide things like all-natural body wash, face creams and moisturizers are cropping up everywhere. Here are just a few spas and stores that sell and use natural beauty products around Atlanta.
Iwi Fresh Garden Day Spa and Atlanta Hot Shave
341 Nelson Street SW
404-577-8072
Iwi Fresh Garden Day Spa is the brainchild of "Skincare Chef" Yolanda Owens, who originally became interested in natural beauty while she was in college. To avoid using products that contained harsh chemicals, Owens drew from the home remedies she'd learned from her grandmother and began making skin care products for herself and her friends, using fresh produce, essential oils, and herbs.
You can now buy Owens' popular "14-carrot-glow" face creams and create your own veggie body scrubs and body oils right at Iwi Fresh. Guests can also make use of the spa services, getting garden facials, massages, hair treatments and all-natural manicures and pedicures, complete with veggie nail polish. For our bearded friends, there are also organic barber and shave-skin parlor treatments.
112 North Avondale Road (also located at Krog Street Market)
404-377-7800
Owner Emilie Sennebogen Bryant first began experimenting with making natural beauty products while living in Los Angeles where she worked in the film industry as a freelancer. In September 2004, she launched Mama Bath + Body. After selling her products at several Atlanta-area festivals, Sennebogen Bryant opened her store in Avondale Estates.
Mama specializes in handmade lotions, shampoo bars, soy candles and scrubs featuring popular, natural ingredients such as shea butter, coconut oil, sweet almond oil and essential oils, but Sennebogen Bryant is probably best known for her neighborhood soap line. It features scents that represent different Atlanta neighborhoods. The idea came out of Sennebogen Bryant's years of working the Atlanta festival circuit, where she noticed that some fragrances sold better in certain neighborhoods. "It was just kind of an interesting sociological observation. And I started to think that was kind of a neat idea that people that live in neighborhoods had similar olfactory likes," she told Decaturish.com.
For example, Mama's Kirkwood soap smells of tangerine, lavender, and grapefruit, Inman Park is a rose geranium scent and Little Five Points, of course, smells of patchouli.
Aviary Beauty and Wellness Collective
659 Auburn Ave NE #125
404-577-2460
A group of professionals in the beauty and wellness industries teamed up to run Aviary, a beauty and wellness collective in Old Fourth Ward, which opened in 2009. The collective is made up of six professionals: owner/founder Amy Leavell Bransford, estheticians Kelly Painter and Amy "Dee" Stufflebeam, hairstylists Jenni Snyder Renshaw and Victoria Gutierrez, and massage therapist Alexis Shanks. Their services include hair coloring with organic dye from an Italian company called OWAY, several different kinds of facials, including microderm, ultrasonic and cool compress treatments, eyebrow, upper lip, cheek/face and underarm waxing as well as lash and brow tinting.
636 North Highland Avenue NE
404-998-8198
What's left out of natural beauty products is often equally as important as what's in them. Fig and Flower on North Highland Ave. offers a wide range of eco-friendly products that are cruelty-free and do not contain any of the following: parabens, aluminum, glycols, silicones, formaldehyde, petrochemicals, sodium laurel/laureth sulfate...and the list goes on.
Founder Sara Lamond first became interested in natural beauty in 2010, after being introduced to clean eating while taking a cross fit-inspired boot camp. The experience "piqued [her] awareness of not only the ingredients [she] put in [her] body, but also those that [she uses] on [her] body." Lamond teamed up with her friend, Blair Wagoner, who has a master's degree in nutrition and had been focused on clean living, and Fig and Flower was born.
They sell everything from natural makeup and brushes, skin care and hair products, candles and even, eco-friendly cleaning products. What's more, items can be purchased both online and in-store.
659 Auburn Ave NE
404-549-7403
HollyBeth Anderson became interested in organic living while traveling in Europe and Latin America, but found herself unable to find the natural beauty products she was looking for once she returned home to Georgia. So, she set out to make her own.
HollyBeth Organics sells USDA-certified organic skin and hair care products, including anti-aging products and items for blemish-prone, dry and oily skin types. Some of HollyBeth Organics' most popular items are Anderson's first creation, an eye cream made with sweet almond, camellia and jojoba oils, as well as Rose Geranium Face Moisturizer, Grits & Honey Scrub and Nourishing Body Oil.
