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you obviously love flowers—are you a gardener?i am a gardener. i live in new york though, so i'm limited to window boxes. we actually have a hibiscus tree flowering right now.what was your inspiration for starting the red flower line of beauty products?the inspiration for red flower comes from so many places, but i think mostly it's my one way of offering something to people who are seeking care, health, well-being, and a sense of transformation in their life. so many people have a skill in their hands, a therapist, or a physician, a spiritual leader, and i feel that those are things that i have a feeling for but that i can't offer in the same way, and so i really look at red flower as my way of offering a sense of healing.why was it important to you to use natural ingredients?anything that you put on yourself is a way of connecting back to the earth. since we put so much on our bodies every day—and the parallels between what we put on our skin and what we consume have the same real effect on our health—we should consider every single thing that we put on our skin, and how it affects not only our bodies but how it affects the earth, where it comes from, where it's going to. there's a whole cycle of which we are a part. it's the quantity of product that we end up putting over ourselves that makes me feel that that connection is so imperative.where do you source your ingredients?we source our ingredients from all over the world. my family is from argentina, and one of the ways that we source sustainably and responsibly is to look to local producers. there's a small farm in cordoba called las ohas, where we draw a lot of our lavender and mints from. this woman was an architect and a lawyer, a very professional person, and she decided that the best way she could help her country was actually coming back to the land. here's a person who took her career, changed it, and started working with the local community, wild-crafting over the mountainous area of cordoba, to pull groups of people who might otherwise not be able to utilize their skill in any other way. i very much feel that each of these ingredients has a life to it, not only the life that comes from the plant itself, but the way it's treated along the path. so not only, ideally, should something be organic, grown without pesticides, wild-crafted, but it should come with a spirit of positive feeling.do you use organic ingredients in red flower products?red flower has always been 100% natural. as ingredients that we were not able to source organically have become available organically, we are shifting those ingredients to organics because it allows for a more controlled understanding of each ingredient. there are some things that we'll never be able to get organic, and they're very fine, natural ingredients like ylang ylang, a more common ingredient that is quite difficult to source organic. these ingredients bring either such an important effect, or such an important scent, that to replace them would diminish the quality of the product. that said, i would never put something in a product that wasn't 100% natural.how else are red flower products green?many companies make a claim about being organic by using organic chamomile, an easy thing to do, not very expensive. what really matters is the base of the product, scent only makes up between 5 and 20% of a product, but it's the other 80 to 95% that really needs to be delved into and understood deeply. that to me is the most significant effort that red flower is making, to delve deeper and deeper into the quality of thee base-core ingredients: coffee that would be fair-trade or organic certified coffee, sugar, salts, shea butters, oils. and then there are all the chemical ingredients that we don't use: sodium laurel sulfate, methyl parabens. it's important to look at the whole picture.what are some of the beauty brands you like?there are some really wonderful jurlique products, there's a product that i've been buying for years, and, literally, i spray it on everything i own. it's a rose spray and it's very simple, but it's one of the best rose sprays out there. there's also a dr. hauschka rose quince cream, called day cream—the scent is so simple, and it fits so perfectly to the product and its effect. it’s just relaxing, uplifting, clean, and it's not excessive. i like things that are what they should be.where did you get the idea for the image on your packaging?red flower does everything in house, and we're working with this wonderful, genius, friend of mine who i've known for almost ten years. she is a swiss yogi, and she's currently in rwanda, teaching yoga for six months. everything that we do, we do together. i was looking to create an image on the red flower skin bottle, that would speak, from a packaging/design standpoint, to this idea of cradle to cradle, of a life-cycle of a product. our red flower skin washes are biodegradable and the packaging is p.e.t., which is not biodegradable, it's recyclable. we chose that packaging because they have the same packaging as water bottles, and there are more water bottle recycling plants than any other kind of recycling plants in the country. the image is actually from a plant in the carrot family, it's queen anne’s lace, and not only are there carrots in the product, but this is the oldest existing flower fossil. so the flower fossil dates back 120 million years, and it just, to me, signified this idea of beginning and ending at the same place. also, i think flowers mean life, they're the symbol of everything that we should be proud of, in a sense, as people respecting and living on earth, and to recall that is also important, that aesthetic, beauty and principle of life that is symbolized in the flower.do you have any winter skin-care secrets that you can share with us?i recommend buying a very large bottle of organic extra virgin olive oil and using that every single time you step out of the shower. i'm a big fan of stepping out of the shower with wet skin, and applying oil to the whole body. also apply oil to your hair—whether it's extra virgin olive oil or red flower massage oil—and then wrap it in a hot towel, and sit for twenty minutes. the oil bonds to the hair, and when you rinse it off the whole scalp and hair are moisturized.got any other suggestions for making it through the winter more beautifully?since we're inside so much more, we really try and change the way our home feels—just incredible things to bring nature back into the house. i do love to have fresh or grow plants and grow herbs in the home. some other great things are just changing your bed. gaiam has just incredible fiber sheets—putting those on the bed, just re-doing the bed and making a new world there. one of the big things that we try to do, we have a big delivery every week from urban organics, and we really try to keep our diet seasonally based. so for us, our diet really does change, and it sort of makes sense, you know, you need the squashes and the heavier vegetables as the season changes. i always have oranges, every day.what does green mean to you?green is probably much more basic than the things that you choose to put around you, because the things that you choose to put around you are actually very easy, all you have to do is go to the store and buy them. for me it's really about how you live your life, how you use the things in your life, to really try, first off, not to be wasteful. for example, how long do you take a shower for? apparently, every time you take a shower, it's fifty-five gallons of water, in one ten-minute shower, so cutting your shower time in half. when you want to take a long shower, make it an exceptionally beautiful experience so you're actually engaged in what you are doing. even if you're using more, at least it's a more fulfilling experience. so, to me it's about being conscious as a whole. it's also, to me, very much about community—from composting, to shopping from the farmer's markets, looking to really pursue, as much as possible, recycling programs, walking as much as possible.why do you love what you do?i do what i do because i think it changes the way people feel about their lives, and i hope to really give someone a reason to notice, to be aware of how they live, to appreciate the escape, to find a healthy luxury. it feels meaningful when someone's experience of coming home to light a candle, or taking a shower, and that experience is actually enhanced in way that is meaningful. we have such small moments in our lives, and to be able to affect a moment positively is enormously meaningful to me.