Two Alaskan Skin Care Entrepreneurs Dish on the Best Cold Weather Ingredients for Your Face

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Unlike France, South Korea, or Switzerland, Alaska is not necessarily on the list of places revered for its skin care know-how. But maybe it should be. After all, the women who live there deal with dry, windy, freezing, and snowy conditions. Surely those of us living here in the Lower 48 could learn something from them, right? Two women-owned and Alaska-based skin care companies, Arxotica and Alaska Glacial Mud Co., are both using some of Alaska’s unique sustainable natural resources in their gorgeous beauty product offerings, so I knew I had to pick their brains.

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Lauren Padawer, 36, is the founder of Alaska Glacial Mud Co, and a native of St. Louis, MO. She moved to Alaska permanently after falling in love with the state when she graduated from college. A biologist by training, she currently fishes on the Copper River for a living– she owns her own boat and is skilled in net-hanging – and harvests mud for her beauty company which specializes in, yep, mud masks, which she’s given the clever name of Glacial Facial. “Everyone up here loves playing in the mud,” says Padawer. “It’s somewhat of a primal thing.”

Padawer describes the first time she ever stepped into the mud of the Copper River Delta as “the most luxurious, buttery mud in the world.” She harvests the mud by hand with buckets, using a team of two to six people. The water that forms the mud comes down from four different mountain ranges, and includes volcanic sediment. This mud is some of the most minerally rich and cleanest on the market, because there are no upriver pollution sources like farms, mines, or factories.

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Besides mud, Alaska also has a lot of flora and fauna that are relatively untapped beauty resources. Michelle Sparck is a 42-year-old member of the Qissunamiut tribe of western Alaska, and her two sisters (they’re triplets!) started Arxotica in 2006 after winning a $20,000 no-strings-attached grant to encourage native entrepreneurship. Sparck and her sisters were self-described activists and “politicos,” working in Washington DC, but they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to spotlight their region’s natural resources. The result is an artisanal line of beautiful soaps and a specialty serum, with more categories in development.

“We wanted to prove the efficacy and the northern vigor phenomenon, which means botanicals at a higher latitude are more potent because they’re fighting more extreme elements,” says Sarck. “And they’re solar powered because we’ve got he midnight sun pounding down on them so they’re uber-packed with nutrients.”

One such magical botanical? The crowberry, which is a food staple in northern latitudes. It’s also a natural hydrator, has anti-inflammatory properties, is packed with antioxidants, and can even provide UVA/UVB protection when eaten.

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Then there are salmon, which are plentiful in the state. The omega-3 fatty acids in salmon have long been known to be beneficial to skin when you ingest it, and it’s readily available as a supplement. So how come no one ever thought to use it as a facial oil? Well, Arxotica’s founders did. The brand produces a salmon-oil based luxury serum called Quyung-lii, which means “the potent one,” and which is also packed with other native ingredients like the aforementioned crowberry, fireweed, and Alaskan glacial water. It is as luxe as any mainstream brand I’ve ever tried, and I promise it doesn’t smell fishy at all and it absorbs beautifully.

Besides the ingredients they’ve harvested and monetized for their brands, Sparck and Padawer shared some of the other ways people take care of their skin in the land of the midnight sun. Speaking of sun, sun protection is surprisingly an issue in winter, thanks to reflection off the snow. Sparck said that many people walk around with goggle tans during the winter. Padawer uses sunscreen or a moisturizer with sunscreen everyday. Sparck, however, said that growing up in an indigenous area, people never used sunscreen. She credits the food she ate growing up with bestowing natural protection – crowberry and seal oil are both known for having skin protecting properties. (Although Sparck acknowledges that seal oil is not likely to catch on in the mainstream.) “But Alaskans love to go on vacation in Hawaii,” says Sparck. “We always use sunscreen there!”

Alaskans, not surprisingly, are also into natural remedies. Pedawar said her doula made her a concoction of shea butter, lavender, coconut oil, and the lesser-known illipe butter, which she loves, and she also likes to use a natural brand called Wild Carrot Herbals, which is based in Oregon.

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Sparck credits clothing with providing facial protection much more so than any particular product. “Musk ox underbelly fur is very fine and ten times warmer than wool,” Sparck said. “And the fur ruffs on our parkas keep the wind and sun off our faces.” Padawer summed up her adopted state, “Alaskans are not cut from the same cloth. There’s just a lot of purity [there].”