Moon Juice on why skincare should be a healing journey

Sure, a face mask can’t do your laundry or pay your bills, but you can’t underestimate the benefit of a little me-time for body, mind and skin.

Leading the charge on beauty as a form of self-care is lifestyle guru Amanda Chantal Bacon, founder of Moon Juice, a Venice, California juice-shop-turned-wellness-empire with an A-list following including Gwyneth Paltrow and Shailene Woodley. Her mission? To elevate consciousness and wellbeing through plant-based and adaptogenic food, supplements and skincare, that as Bacon says, “bridges the world of alchemy, biology and functional ingredients.”

Bacon’s interest in wellness and Ayurvedic principles started from a young age. “I had bronchial issues growing up. I was always going to the doctor, pumped with all the pharmaceuticals but nothing helped,” says Bacon. One day she was shopping at a health food store, where an Ayurvedic doctor overheard her coughing. “He came over and asked some very typical Ayurvedic questions and took my pulse. After examining my tongue, he gave my mother a list of foods to avoid.” From that time, Bacon saw the direct relationship between food and wellbeing. “My parents empowered me to make my own choices with food so I was in control of my own health... I’ve been on this journey ever since.” Opening Moon Juice, it seems, was her cosmic path.

Not so kismet however, was her foray into skincare. “When we opened 10 years ago, I would’ve said that I’d be the least likely person to formulate skincare. Editors and retailers were always asking for it but skincare wasn’t something I even used or believed in. I had a very simple routine, a bar of soap and sometimes an oil; my focus was on holistic health.” Once she hit her mid-thirties, these products didn’t cut it and so she endeavoured to upgrade her minimalist routine. The problem: most effective skincare products had ingredients that didn’t align with her lifestyle. “I wasn’t ready to let go of my new skin, so I got to work [in creating my own].”

From there, her tightly curated skincare fundamentals were born, encompassing a gentle cleanser to match your skin’s PH, a liquid exfoliator, a hyaluronic acid serum and an adaptogenic moisturiser to lock it all in. Bacon explains, “We partnered with one of the best chemists in the industry to pair potent plants with clinical actives. We carefully source our ingredients from their native regions and love to use some of the same key ingredients for both ingestible and topical formulas – Ashwagandha, hyaluronic acid, Schisandra, Reishi and Silver Ear Mushroom all have incredible synergistic inside-out and outside-in effects.”

In addition to this, all Moon Juice skincare is formulated without parabens, phthalates, sulfates, silicones, fragrance and artificial dyes and is vegan, non-GMO and gluten free. “I wanted care that would visibly change skin without harming the earth, your biome or your endocrine system.”

Having been around for a decade, Moon Juice pre-dates the wellness boom. “I focus on staying true to my mission: to always dig deeper and look at how we can foster a space for education and community to promote self-care for communal care. The world needs our clarity and capacity that comes from being well now more than ever.”

Beyond skincare, Bacon keeps many other rituals in her rotation including meditation, breath connection, dry brushing, tongue scraping and hair and scalp oil treatments. “It hasn’t been the wild and out-there experiments that have brought radical change, it’s been the simple rituals… putting loving attention on something daily is to me the very definition of beauty.”