Going Green: Tata Harper On Her Au Naturel Skincare And The Secrets To A Flawless Face Postflight
The Colombian-born engineer-turned-entrepreneur shares the inspiration behind her namesake brand and how her family shaped her beauty routine…
It’s a sunny Friday afternoon when Tata Harper calls in from her farm in Vermont, a region known in the United States for its rugged terrain and lush landscape. Surrounded by nature, Tata recounts the initial inspiration for her skincare brand along with tips and tricks to maintain your beauty routine as you travel this summer.
As the pioneer of the green beauty movement, Tata’s sprawling emerald fields serve as the perfect setting – and home – for her beauty laboratory. Her high-tech, organic skincare line took 5 years to develop after realising the importance of using natural, chemical-free products when her stepfather was diagnosed with cancer.
“I started reassessing the healthy choices in my life because I had thought it was all about diet and exercise but I never really thought about what I was doing every day,” she said. Tata started to re-evaluate her day-to-day and how it was truly affecting her. “I thought of this broader concept of wellness, that it’s all emotional, physical, and spiritual. It’s not just about one thing. I started changing everything. I really felt I had conquered every category of my life except for skincare.” Taking a moment to truly look at how she was treating her skin, Tata knew others would feel the same way. “I was just really passionate about health and wellness and wanted to create a solution that will make people’s lives better.”
Recognising a gap in the market, she knew all-natural products sometimes didn’t cut it. “This is the age before ‘clean.’ We’re talking almost 18 years ago. I wanted to provide an alternative. I was like I can’t believe I’m the only person and I had no idea how big or how small the company was going to be. I just wanted to provide an alternative to this narrative that synthetic chemicals are the only things that work.” Tata controls every part of the production process on her farm in Vermont, using a combination of locally grown and globally sourced ingredients. “We are the extreme version of clean because we just do not use anything that is not grown from nature. It’s not that we just avoid a couple of ingredients either. Everything is just completely pure.”
Instilling the importance of natural recipes in her skincare line came at an early age. Homemade remedies from her grandmother also influenced Tata’s love of the natural world. Together they would host spa parties in Colombia. “She was one of those people that made me feel really special. So everything that she did was special to me,” said Tata. “She really imparted all those things in me, like the love of nature and just really to believe in its power.”
Fresh from a family trip in Colorado, Tata shares more stories about how her family fueled her dream to create her namesake brand and secrets to maintaining your beauty regimen as you travel.
Harper’s BAZAAR Arabia (HBA): Sounds like spending your childhood with your grandmother made such a beautiful impression. What lessons did she pass on to you that you still practice today?
Tata Harper (TH): One of the things she helped me realise early on is just how powerful natural ingredients are. I remember being super sick multiple times and she would go and create these mixtures of milk and spices. You’d wake up perfect the next day. She was a big fan of DIY beauty. She loved oatmeal, she loved honey, she loved turmeric, and she loved spices. She would love to mix things herself and make things for her hair, for her body, for cellulite – you name it. We would wake up early and make a whole bunch of things and she would invite friends and family and cousins — we’re a really huge family. So every Saturday morning, it was kind of like a day of beautification. It’s like a morning of getting ready for the weekend and getting this joy of just doing something great for yourself. That has always stayed with me. She really passed on to me that you do beauty for you so that you can feel good and be the best that you can be.
HBA: Your farm in Vermont sounds stunning! How did the idea come about to grow your ingredients?
TH: We’ve had this farm way before I started Tata Harper — 23 years now. I do source my ingredients globally and we make some of the things here on the farm as well. The farm plays two roles. Number one is that I wanted to control the process. Before I started I didn’t realise the amount of outsourcing that is happening in our industry. It’s like almost everything is outsourced. Companies outsource their formulas to labs and it’s semi-customized with an already existing formula. It’s never a unique product. I felt that having our labs here at the farm enabled us to make unique formulas…and a unique combination of ingredients. Second, it was super important for us to control our production. I didn’t want to subcontract that part of the business where someone else was doing the formulas. Then you have to do so many minimums which can be wasteful. That doesn’t lead to the client having the freshest products because you’re sitting on a lot of inventory…The farm has helped me make everything completely ourselves. We’re completely vertically integrated. The farm is also a place of great inspiration and we have a garden here where we grow our herbs. There’s a special ingredient in our products called the State-Grown Beauty Complex, which has five herbs we grow on the farm.
In order to make the best natural formulas, you also have to bring ingredients from [around the world]. We bring ingredients from 100 different countries and those combinations of ingredients are unique to us. There’s no way that we can grow everything here on the farm. We bring tons from Israel, Germany, France, Canada, the Middle East, and Latin America as well.
HBA: I love that you mention on your website, ‘If a product isn’t perfect, you won’t launch it.’ What’s most important to you when creating the next Tata Harper beauty product?
TH: It’s true. I don’t like launching and making lousy products. We’re always trying to make the best products in the world and in order to do that, a lot of things are considered number one. We get very involved with the active ingredients and how the products are gonna work — and how the cocktails of ingredients that we’re curating work. We use super-intensive technology and we use them all at once and in all of our formulas. There are absolutely no trade-offs when it comes to that. Then we pay a ton of attention to the experiential part because I feel that making an enjoyable product will motivate you to use it more and will actually make you feel better when you’re using it. It’s really important part to us that after we’re done with the [tech side] we focus a lot on the application experience because no one really loves to apply disgusting stuff in the skin just because it’s ‘good for them.’ The other thing is that and there are no shortcuts here either–we want to make it as sustainable as possible. We want to be 100% natural, even when it comes to packaging…Our environmental footprint is lower because everything happens in one building instead of having to ship things all over the place… Getting all of these things right is how we get to the price point that we’re at — having only pure ingredients, using technology, and being sustainable and pleasurable to use. That’s basically what we do…You have to have that way of thinking when you’re trying to make the best products there are.
HBA: Any fun plans for the summer? Tell me more!
TH: I was in Colorado. I went to Aspen, with my family and it’s the perfect family vacation. You can do a lot of different things. There’s obviously a lot of hiking, biking, and family time strolling through town, but you also get a good healthy dose of friends. We were there also sponsoring the art festival happening. So there was a bit of partying and art. It was just like a really fun vacation. I just felt that it was like the perfect mix of everything.
HBA: What items can you never go without when traveling?
TH: I think that my approach to planes is that I want to be hyper-hydrated inflight because airplanes just have a lot of recirculating dry air. It sucks away all your moisture. You really want to keep the moisture and kind of like that barrier cushion in the skin. So for really long flights, my go-to are the hydrating floral mask, the hydrating floral essence, and the bare lip cream. I basically slather myself with the hydrating floral mask right at the onset of the flight. I put it in my hands, I put it everywhere, neck and chest. Then I put the lip treatment. When I’m about to land, whatever hasn’t been absorbed, I rub off a little bit of the excess and then I apply the hydrating floral essence on top and then it creates kind of like this milk on the skin. I pat it dry and when you arrive you’re skin just looks incredible. There’s a luminescence. I love it.
HBA: I find keeping my skin healthy when traveling always falls by the wayside. What tips and tricks would you recommend in keeping up your skincare rituals when away on vacation?
TH: Number One, when I am traveling on vacation, I typically spend more time on myself than I usually do. Number Two is I change my routine, whether it’s vacation or work travel. I have a couple of like sets that are like a whole routine — it’s called the Daily Essentials. I sometimes travel with three or four of those, but it’s every step. So it’s like an exfoliator, it’s a mask, there’s a serum, a moisturiser, oil — everything I need. It’s like the perfect kit that you can use depending on your length of stay.
HBA: The sun can be so harsh during the summer! What advice would you offer in protecting one’s skin?
TH: I am not an everyday SPF user. I use it mainly when I’m in the sun or I’m gardening or things like that, but I love Avasol. It’s like a sunscreen brand that’s a stick that is tinted. I love using it. I put it in my hands. They have a body one and a face one. I’m always with a really big hat, even with sunscreen on.
HBA: I find women put so much pressure on themselves to always look young–especially on social media. What advice would you offer to anyone worried about aging?
TH: I feel that it’s also growing for men. It surprises me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in the last two years, men have been really interested [in their appearance]. For me, I’m in my forties and my forties have been my best decade so far… I mean, there’s no such thing as eternal youthful perfection, and worrying about aging is irrelevant because it’s a natural process of everybody’s life. I think that what you can do is focus on being physically and emotionally healthy and put your energy into trying to live as healthy as possible by making great choices along the way. I think that that is the ultimate goal. Cultivating healthy habits is going to make you age in a healthy way — you’ll look vibrant. That’s what I’ve been focusing on. I also don’t think that you should criticize men or women who want to look and stay sexy when they’re older. I think that it’s great. I’m in the business of trying to make people’s skin as healthy as possible. So they look their best at any age. When you’re healthy, you’re instantly more attractive.
HBA: As a mother of three adorable little ones, what would you say is most sacred to you when it comes to your own beauty routine that you look forward to passing on to them one day?
TH: We do a lot of our beauty routines together — it’s so cute. I have a 15-year-old, but he’s not like into every step, but he does love to mask every once in a while. He asks me when he has little things happening in his skin. I want them to have my same outlook on beauty — that it’s something that you keep doing for your enjoyment as I do, and that it keeps playing a really soothing role in your life. We all need those soothing moments in our lives where we feel that we are replenishing ourselves. I hope that beauty helps fill some of that void and that it’s as enjoyable to them as it is to me.
Images courtesy of Tata Harper.