YATZIL BELLEZA NATURAL ⊙ Ancestral Makeup, Sustainable + Plastic-Free

I think the universe really likes introducing me to people twice.

I first met Irán on one of my trips to Mexico City at an artisan market. I stopped at her table and bought a natural makeup remover and I remember immediately loving the texture. We only spoke briefly, but she told us a little about the environmental philosophy behind her products and I tucked the interaction away somewhere in my brain.

Then, months later, Mexico City did what Mexico City does to me.

I was there for my residency, walking through the pouring rain trying to find an address for a massage. I was definitely a little lost, knew I was somewhere close and honestly wasn't in much of a hurry. I wandered into this tiny, beautiful boutique to ask for directions and there she was.

Irán

I don't know. There are people you meet and immediately feel like you're supposed to know them.

This time I stayed. I started looking through everything she had created and fell in love with her multiuse pigments. We talked more, exchanged information and eventually made plans to meet for coffee so I could hear about Yatzil properly.

And then I kind of fell in love with her.

Her heart is so pure. She's incredibly thoughtful about what she makes, why she makes it and what it leaves behind. The more she told me about Yatzil, the more I realized that the philosophy behind her work was just as beautiful as the products themselves.

Yatzil means “cosa amada”

Before Yatzil, Iran was (and still is) a sociologist.

While working with social organizations, she spent time working at Greenpeace, where she became deeply aware of the scale of the world's plastic problem.

At the same time, she was dealing with very sensitive skin.

She remembers buying a cream marketed as “natural.” It smelled like red berries and after applying it all over her body, she broke out in tiny bumps. Her dermatologist explained that ingredients listed broadly as fragrance or perfume can encompass numerous fragrance components and for her sensitive skin, that became a turning point.

So she started looking for another way.

Irán enrolled in a program studying natural solid cosmetics and, with guidance from a chemical engineer, learned how to formulate products herself using natural ingredients.

During the pandemic, while she was also working at UNICEF México, Yatzil began her project.

Slowly, she professionalized the brand and expanded it from products for humans into a small line for pets as well.

Every detail carries a little bit of Mexico with it.

Yatzil is a Maya word meaning “cosa amada,” beloved thing.

Irán’s love for Mexican culture runs throughout the line. Her deodorant is called Xiik, the Maya word for armpit. The shades of her multiuse lip and cheek pigments are identified using Maya numerals (●, ●●, ●●●, ●●●●, —).

Even the format of the products is intentional.

By creating solid cosmetics, very little to no water is required in many of the formulations and her products can be packaged in compostable cardboard (or sometimes without packaging at all) rather than relying on plastic.

The way Irán described her philosophy to me was so simple:

“Busco la congruencia en el gusto por lo natural sin afectar a la naturaleza.”

I seek consistency in the love of what is natural, without harming nature.

And then she said:

“Mi cosmética busca una belleza consciente.”

My cosmetics seek a conscious kind of beauty.

YES, FINALLY. Obviously I was bringing her home with me. 😭

But then we had to talk about money.

When Irán and I met for coffee, I told her I wanted to bring Yatzil into Sacred Skin Alchemy. It wasn’t my first vendor meeting, but it was only my second in spanish so I was feeling both nervous and excited to talk to her more and express my interest in her line. Then we got to pricing, she gave me her price and I told her no.

I wanted to pay her more.

Which led to this incredibly tender conversation happening partly in my broken Spanish, partly through emotion, with both of us getting teary-eyed while I tried to explain something that is incredibly important to me:

I will never extract from Mexico or its makers to create a Western profit.

Ever.

If I bring something home, mark it up in U.S. dollars and place it inside my space, the person who created it deserves to participate meaningfully in that value.

I don't want someone's labor to be inexpensive enough for me to make a better margin, that's not what this is.

Irán is so humble that I practically had to convince her to let me give her more money. 😂 And somehow this tiny conversation about wholesale pricing became this much larger conversation about value, culture, reciprocity and what it actually means to support someone's work.

That moment probably made me believe in this partnership even more.

This is where the magic lives.

The entire point of what I'm building inside Sacred Skin Alchemy is to bring true beauty to the people who trust me.

Not trend forecasting.

Not finding the cheapest version of something beautiful and selling it for the highest possible margin.

I want whole ingredients. Things made by actual hands. Things discovered while wandering. Things with stories and people and places attached to them.

I've worked with beautiful plant-based products cultivated all over the United States and I still believe deeply in some of them, but I'm beginning to understand something else through my time in Mexico.

There is something about ancestral land being tended to as ancestral land and something being created by people who carry a relationship to its history, traditions and spirit.

I don't know that everything meaningful can be quantified on an ingredient list.

Some things carry place.

Some things carry hands.

Some things carry memory.

And maybe that sounds romanticized, but increasingly, this feels true to me.

This is where the magic lives.

So when you pick up one of the Yatzil pigments in the casa, I want you to know that you're not buying something I found scrolling through a wholesale marketplace. You're holding something made by a woman named Irán .

A sociologist. An environmentalist. A formulator. A Mexican maker. A person with one of the sweetest hearts I've had the privilege of encountering on these trips.

Someone I first met at an artisan market, somehow found again while lost in the rain and now get to introduce to you. To me, that is what this little casita is supposed to be.

For now, I’ve brought home a small collection of Yatzil’s multiuse lip + cheek balms in a few beautiful shades (just the beginning). As I continue spending time with Irán and exploring her work, you’ll slowly see more of Yatzil find its way into the boutique.

Cosas amadas, always.