There are a lot of extraordinary skincare lines in the world. I know — because I have spent nearly three decades working with them, learning from them, and recommending them to clients I love. As an esthetician, my loyalty has always been to the skin first. Not to any one brand, including my own.

Urban Alchemy Lab is not my attempt to be the best. It is simply my melody — the thing that has been building inside me since I was six years old, sitting with a gardener and herbalist named Annette who taught me to make infused oils from scratch. The first two we made together were cassia cinnamon and strawberry. If I close my eyes, I can still smell them. Something clicked into place that day that has never unclicked.

My upbringing was not conventional by most standards. While other kids were eating fast food, I was eating soba noodles and soy milk, taking propolis and royal jelly every day. My mother has Lupus, and she approached her health the way she approached everything — with curiosity and intention. Yoga, acupuncture, meditation, candle gazing. Wellness wasn't a trend in our house. It was simply the way the world worked. I am deeply grateful for that. It shaped everything.

In my early twenties I took a leap of faith and earned my CIDESCO diploma — the highest international credential in esthetics. I became dual-licensed and never stopped studying after that. The industry took me everywhere — training rooms, treatment rooms, hotel spas, consulting work, education. I learned from European skincare philosophies, from Ayurvedic teachers, from estheticians working quietly and brilliantly in rooms I was lucky enough to walk into.

My path through this industry has been long and full — nearly three decades working in almost every capacity it offers. As an educator and trainer for some of the largest skincare brands in the world. As a spa director for properties that demanded excellence. Consulting, directing, traveling, learning. I have sat with formulators, trained estheticians, built programs, and transformed spaces.

And through all of it — every title, every role, every chapter — my favorite place has always been the same. The treatment room. One client. One hour. That quiet, undivided space where the real work happens.

Then in 2019, I opened the space I had always envisioned — a full wellness center with massage therapy, acupuncture, a salt room, an infrared sauna, and a meditation space. It was everything.

One year later, COVID happened.

I had to close. Ten months of stillness and grief. And somewhere inside all of that — I formulated. I poured three decades of knowledge and a very full heart into creating something that could carry what I believed about plants, about skin, about the connection between the two.

When I came back, I came back as Urban Alchemy Lab.

It is not for everyone. Not every melody is. But the people who find it — who smell it, who feel it, who come back for it — are the reason I share it. They are the ones who encouraged me to bring my song to you.

Above everything else, I am an esthetician. Being in the treatment room with a client — that is still my favorite place in the world to be. There is something that happens in that hour that I have never been able to fully put into words. The skin softens, yes. But so does everything else. The shoulders drop. The breath slows. Something that was held gets released. That exchange — that quiet, holistic care — is the heart of everything I do.

Urban Alchemy Lab is simply that heart, bottled. Every formula is an extension of what I offer in the room — the same intention, the same plant intelligence, the same belief that your skin and your senses deserve to be tended to together. When you use these products at home, I want you to feel something close to what my clients feel on that table.

I am moving through perimenopause alongside many of the women I serve — and what I have found, in the treatment room and in my own life, is that what the body craves most during this chapter is not more intervention. It is nature. Grounding. A nervous system that finally gets to exhale. These formulas were made with that in mind. The aromatherapy is not decorative — it is the message. Come back to the earth. Slow down. Let the plants do what they have always known how to do.

I believe aging is a privilege. I do not believe in waging war on your skin. I believe the plants have always known — and that my job, after all this time, is simply to help you hear them.

— Stevie