it’s also a superstructure for those who feel ignored or condescended to by western medicine. While self-
help-styled wellness involved a top-down, rules-based wellness orthodoxy – which does, of course, work for
many women – newer, self-care-specific wellness is an easy sell for women on a heroine’s journey with their
bodies and feelings, through sun signs, human design, snail-mucus face masks or blunts. Whatever works.
The marketing
While self-help-oriented wellness products were straight out of the health-food store with utilitarian or
medicinal packaging, the aesthetic of self-care wellness branding is often minimalist, sans-serif and
streamlined. A good example is the packaging of the brand Dosist, which sells pens with precise doses of
CBD and THC. The company pitches itself as health-adjacent, like many other savvy cannabis brands that
are attempting to appeal to a new market with a clean, high-tone look and feel.
Dosist just opened a second brick-and-mortar location in LA to create “wellness experiences” (with the help
of a “wellness concierge”), joining Saks, Neiman Marcus and the now-bankrupt Barneys New York, all of
which have capitalised on the potential of luxe wellness, the natural extension of the self-care wellness
model.
Many self-care-oriented wellness products, including those from CAP Beauty, Tulura, Golde, Tata Harper
and Tatcha, look like a new kind of high-end beauty product. Others channel happy, kiddo vibes (see:
Kopari Beauty, Supergoop, Moon Juice and Drunk Elephant). Those could respond to another feeling many
who respond to self-care are seeking: a childlike lightness that momentarily distracts from the grown-up
problems of the every day.
© New York Times