Balanced Beauty

BY NEHA SURADKAR

Ayla is a boutique beauty store hidden in San Francisco that thrives on clean beauty and exceptional service. Founded by Dara Kennedy, Ayla prides on being run by an all-women team, bringing different perspectives and interests to the table.

Kennedy grew up in an ethnically homogeneous small town in New Hampshire. As a biracial kid, not fitting neatly into a box made her free to define herself in her own terms, focusing less on what she is and more on what she could be.

Kennedy worked at Goodby, Silverstein and Partners in the early 2000s, with Elizabeth Arden as one of the clients. Then, with her passion for beauty and skincare, she moved to New York to develop a skincare product and new brands for them.

With academic parents and an engineer brother, Kennedy was raised to appreciate art and science, and she feels that beauty combines art and science in the best possible ways. “There’s the objective—’do these ingredients go well together, and what do they do?’—and the subjective—’how does it make me feel?’—that combination of art and science, wrapped in storytelling and culture. And the fact that beauty is such a complicated subject makes it endlessly fascinating to me,” says Kennedy.

Ayla is a beauty business that pairs healthy beauty products for skin, hair, body, and spirit with personal guidance that deeply cares about you. They have a curated range of products at the store, developed by the brands with passion. To help you get the most out of those products, they offer services like facials, skin and hair consultations, Bach Flower consultations, makeup lessons, and group events to deepen your experience, both at their San Francisco studio and via phone or video.

The products at the store are carefully selected to make sure they are effective and safe to use. As Ayla is more about connecting with people, they have a great relationship with the brands and their founders. All this helps to tell the story and assure the customers about the genuineness of the people behind the products they are buying.

Sustainability or Clean Beauty is the highlight of Ayla. For Kennedy, sustainability is all about balance: a recognition that everything and everyone is connected. To ensure the health of people and the planet on an ongoing basis, there is a need to work every day to maintain environmental, social, and economic balance.

She emphasises beauty as being thoughtful and authentic. At Ayla, beauty is not just about self-care, but it also inspires connection with others. Kennedy believes that a great product or experience can change how you feel and how you think about yourself for the better, while a remarkable one can change how you feel about the world.

With their products, the company wants you to think about the pure ingredients, their sourcing and cultivation; how does it affect the health of the planet? They make sure the packaging is plastic-free and compostable if possible, and the same goes for the shipping materials. To reduce the waste due to the return of products, they have introduced mini sizes and sample kits, custom sample services, and guides who love helping out with product recommendations to make sure you find something that you’ll be delighted with. This approach is better for you, better for Ayla, better for the small companies whose products they sell, and better for the planet.

Read more at https://issuu.com/rareluxuryliving/docs/troora_san_francisco_2021_pages/444