What is your background?

Before Alpyn Beauty, I spent many years in New York working in the skincare industry with brands that produced clinical products including Dr. Dennis Gross. One day, my husband and I got to a point where we just knew that we needed a drastic life change. I remember the day we made the decision. That morning I was driving, and I heard somebody say on the radio “sometimes you have to jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.” I took that as a signal from the universe. We both quit our jobs the next day, despite our friends and family telling us that we were crazy. But it was a “life is too short” kind of moment—how were we ever going to know if we didn’t try? And it felt so temporary at first, like a reset. We wanted to just get away from the stress of the city and live in nature and breathe fresh air for a bit. Four years later, here we are, still in Jackson Hole! It just felt right. My heart has always been in the beauty industry, but it’s just in a very different environment now!

What inspired you to found Alpyn, and what was the pivotal moment that sparked you to move forward?

I opened my own beauty bar when I moved to Jackson Hole, WY because I missed the industry (and selfishly needed a place to shop beauty) and I noticed very quickly that my clients were dissatisfied and not seeing results with everything that I was offering. There were a lot of returns, especially in skincare because the climate here is very harsh and nobody could find relief. I was sitting in my backyard looking at these wild, hydrated, juicy plants in the mountains and started wondering, how has the natural flora evolved to survive (and thrive) in a place that was wreaking havoc on everybody else’s skin? When I discovered that skincare ingredients were growing naturally all around me, I began studying wildcrafting and the rest is history!

What drives your company ethos and how is wellness part of it?

Respect and love for nature is at the heart of Alpyn Beauty. We’re a wildcrafted brand, which means the ingredients used in our products are plants harvested from their wild habitat. These wild plants are hard-working & resilient: botanicals that are conditioned to survive in a harsh climate.  When applied, they perform just like they do in the wild: preserving, protecting & strengthening skin.  It’s done in a sustainable way that preserves the plants by carefully harvesting only the fruit, flowers, or branches. The remaining plant is left alive and healthy to keep growing. The wildcrafted ingredients make up Alpyn Beauty’s PlantGenius® complex, which is in every product. Alpyn Beauty is effective at addressing skin concerns and signs of again through natural ingredients, and when it comes to wellness, I believe what comes directly from the Earth are best!

How do you see sun safety as an important element of health and beauty?

Living on a high-altitude mountain, where the sun is a lot stronger, sun safety is crucial in my skincare routine and I wear SPF every day. As we all know, SPF is one of best defenses against melanoma. Sun safety helps prevent skin cancer by protecting your skin, which is the body’s largest organ. The sun also accelerates the skin’s signs of aging, so from a beauty perspective, sun safety is crucial to maintaining youthful skin and preventing overall damage.

How do you make sun safety part of your beauty routine?

Sunscreen is the final step of my daily skincare routine, and I’m sure to reapply it throughout the day. My current favorites are Suntegrity and EleVen by Venus Williams. So I never forget to wear SPF, I leave my sunscreens right next to all my daily skincare products.

For more on Alpyn Beauty, go here.