Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2010

Photo by James Hadfield

When personal trainer and licensed esthetician Elana Schmid invited me to check out her new 100 percent organic salon, Elana Jade, I was forced to make a guilty confession. While I’m scrupulously picky about the food I eat, I’ll gladly bathe my face in all manner of “cutting edge,” lab-concocted chemicals. I can’t really justify the inconsistency, though perhaps I can offload some of the blame on availability, limited funds and conflicting media reports.

At any rate, it seems that I’m not alone. Schmid, who works as a trainer alongside big brother Nathan at his Tokyo-based studio, has seen the same thing countless times in the past. “My clients were training five times a week,” she says, “but the things they were putting in their bodies and on their faces… They just didn’t have any idea.”

Or rather, she conceded, they didn’t know where to go. This was the line of thinking that led the Sydney-born siblings to create Elana Jade, which opened March 1 in Azabu-Juban. The salon’s original skincare products, developed in collaboration with Only Pure Products founder and nutritionist August Hergesheimer, make abundant use of soy oil, shea butter, clay, rosewater, oatmeal and pretty much nothing else. They’re also mixed on the spot with select herbs and essential oils following a detailed complexion analysis—making Elana Jade something akin to a skincare apothecary. The salon’s signature facials, meanwhile, have the whiff of an old world kitchen, courtesy of ingredients like rosemary, honey, frankincense and yogurt.

Photo by James Hadfield

If this sounds almost good enough to eat, that’s the point. “Anything you put on your skin, it’s going into your body, into your bloodstream,” says Schmid, who is also a certified nutritionist. “Your skin is like a thousand tiny mouths.”

So is this the future of skincare or a throwback to mom’s cucumber mask recipes—or both? More importantly, can nature-made really beat out scientifically manufactured when it comes to maintaining that tenacious outpost of vanity: our faces?

Using her high-tech BTBP Skin Analysis System device, Schmid diagnosed my skin as “dehydrated” and, blaming my chemical-laden, moisture-robbing products, sent me home with some samples. Somewhat daunted—the cream in particular had the color and consistency of softened butter—I swapped these new salves into my skincare line-up. A few weeks later, I found my skin surprisingly smooth—not a miraculous change, but a step in the right direction. Schmid emphasizes that such gains need to be combined with a healthy diet and exercise to achieve a lasting impact.

Courtesy of Elana Jade

Elana Jade arrives at a time when natural—and to some degree organic—skincare products are attracting a lot of local media attention, thanks to the popularization of annoying buzzwords like “Lohas” and “eco.” New Japanese brands have emerged, including Do Organics, which carries both EcoCert and BioCosme certifications and is made from domestic ingredients such as rice bran and wild oats. There’s also Three, created in collaboration with makeup artist Rie Omoto, whose high-end skincare products and cosmetics include a variety of organic essential oils.

Is organic becoming the new luxury, then? John Bayle of Alishan Organic Center, the original purveyor of natural products to the foreign community, recalls that when he began visiting food expos in the early ’90s, buyers didn’t have a clue what organic was—let alone how to market it. By 2005, though, that had changed.

This new face of organic is attracting a different breed of consumer, too. Whereas Alishan’s early fans were “non-Japanese and hip Japanese who had lived abroad and developed a taste for peanut butter, tortillas and curry,” people buying the new organic skincare lines are likely to have come across the products in a fashion magazine. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but Bayle strikes a cautious note.

“Lessening the chance of harming oneself is a minor reason,” he says. “[But] for some customers it is the reason. They miss the bigger story.”

Elana Jade: 3F, 1-5-19 Azabu-Juban, Minato-ku. Tel: 03-6438-9895. Open Mon-Wed 9:30am-8:30pm, Thu-Fri 9:30am-6:30pm, Sat 10am-6:30pm, closed Sun. Nearest stn: Azabu-Juban. www.elanajade.com Alishan Organic Center: 185-2 Komahongo, Hidaka-shi, Saitama. Tel: 0429-82-4811. Nearest stn: Koma. www.alishan-organic-center.com