REPOST: Aveda founder, Horst Rechelbacher, dies at 72

Renowned eco-entrepreneur Horst Rechelbacher died in his home in Osceola, Wis., at the age of 72. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2011 and is survived by his wife, daughter, and son. This article looks back on Rechelbacher’s life as an eco-warrior. 

Image Source: telegraph.co.uk

Rechelbacher, who will be celebrated as an eco-revolutionary, leaves the natural beauty world in mourning.
Austrian-born Rechelbacher was an organic beauty activist. His calling came during his early career as a celebrity stylist (he tended to the tresses of Sophia Loren, and ran four salons and a hairdressing school) during which a chemical build up in his salons - which caused him and his colleagues to become ill - shocked him into taking action. This was to be Rechelbacher's career, life, catalyst, and by 1968 - after a life-changing trip to India - he began developing a more natural line of products with his mother. Ten years later, those shampoos and conditioners were labelled Aveda.

A true visionary in the beauty industry, as WWD reports, Rechelbacher was among the first to seek fairtrade sourcing, non-toxic ingredients, organic certification, plant-based aromatherapy, and food-grade formulations for his new brand, Aveda.

So successful, and so cult-like, by 1997 Aveda was making $100 million a year. Rechelbacher, already moving on his next project, decided to sell the company to Estée Lauder for $300 million. Leonard A. Lauder, chairman emeritus of the Estee Lauder Cos., Inc, commented this week that Rechelbacher was a true visionary and unique human being: "Horst himself single-handily created a new industry."

Rechelbacher put a large chunk of the money from the sale into informing the rest of the world about the chemicals lurking in our beauty products, namely petroleum-based ingredients, often hidden in so-called 'natural' and 'organic' lines too.

Once his non-compete clause with Estée Lauder was up, the eco-warrior also launched his own line, Intelligent Nutrients - close to 100 per cent organic in its formulations, Intelligent Nutrients was a "reflection of what Horst wanted for himself," as Telegraph journalist Lucie Young reported back in 2011. In the same interview Young likened Rechelbacher's home, Deer View in Winconsin, to a "parallel universe, where green values are the norm."

Rechelbacher normalised organic beauty for the rest of us too. "Pesticides and insecticides make people sick and are destroying the planet," he once said. His solution was simple; "don't put anything on your skin that you can't eat." He was often seen seen drinking his Intelligent Nutrients hair sprays and serums which were all painstakingly formulated - I witnessed it first hand at one product launch in London.

"How he lived personally, he tried to express professionally," his widow, Kiran Stordalen, explained to WWD . "You see that in all the work he's done. It was a personification of who he was. He lived and breathed the mission and has left an incredible legacy."

The green beauty industry has lost a true visionary; "the planet has lost one of its most passionate friends. So have we," said a statement by Intelligent Nutrients. "To know Horst was to wake up to the world around you, to your own potential, to a new way of thinking." But as the statement adds, and the green beauty world hopes, "his impact truly does live on in salons, shops, fields and minds worldwide. And his mission continues."

Horst Rechelbacher founded the safe beauty products brand called Intelligent Nutrients (IN) after selling his skin care company Aveda to Estee Lauder Companies in 1997. ELC Executive Chairman William Lauder and the rest of the Lauder family are deeply saddened by the loss of a true visionary. Click here to learn how the global cosmetics conglomerate celebrates the legacy of Rechelbacher and the other founders of its brands.