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TRUE BEAUTY Locally-made skincare line keeps it clean by KATHERINE POOLE photography by S.P. MURRAY
J
ulie Hafer has always been serious about skincare. As a child, she would ride her bike to the drugstore at Cameron Village and scour the beauty aisles for the latest lotions and potions. In middle school, she saved her allowance for trips to the makeup counter at Crabtree Valley Mall. “Are you here to play?” she remembers a sales associate asking. “No,” she replied. “I’m here to buy.” Her obsession with beauty products continued through college, where she worked on a license in cosmetology while earning a degree in French from UNC Chapel Hill. During that time, she helped
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a steady stream of friends with skincare and makeup—but the one person she couldn’t help was herself. Her skin was perpetually irritated, and it seemed that the more she spent on high-end products, the worse it became. “I didn’t want to leave the house because I hated my face so much,” says Hafer. Finally, through research and consumer reviews, she realized that her skin was sensitive to the fragrances and harsh additives in the brands she was using. It turned out, expensive did not mean better. She felt duped. “That sense of betrayal is really what made me want to go into this business, because I wanted to do things different-
ly,” she says. Hafer launched the business Beauty Ethics in 2002, quickly growing from a rented booth at a salon in Five Points to a studio in Cameron Village. She also grew a loyal base of clients by offering aesthetic services that used affordable, fragrance-free, non-irritating skincare products from Paula’s Choice. She had it down to a science, but realized that many of her clients had a hard time sticking to the multi-product beauty routines she prescribed, and that they (like her younger self) were still enticed by the allure of luxury lines. That dichotomy—that they knew what was good for their skin, but wouldn’t do it—frustrated
