Don’t worry if you don’t know what Violet Grey is. I had no idea until a few years ago, when my sister moved to Los Angeles, just down the street from the company’s small brick-and-mortar boutique, tucked away amid the high-end shops along Melrose Place. But once you know, you know.
In addition to its Los Angeles boutique, Violet Grey is an online, shoppable beauty edit fact checked by industry experts. It has an aesthetic (both digitally and in its physical store) that miraculously manages to be both approachable and aspirational. It’s an incredible discovery tool for clean and/or independent beauty brands — my sister and I picked up one of Hanicure’s buzzy all-in-one-facial kits at the Melrose Place shop recently and the experience was a trip. (Look up YouTube reviews at your own risk.)
Dallas is lucky to have the beauty boutiques that we do. In just under a year, we scored clean beauty-centric Credo and Follain, and Aspen-based Cos Bar in Preston Hollow, but we don’t (and will probably never) have a Violet Grey.
But we do have Joanna Czech.
You probably know Czech from her impressive roster of celebrity clientele. The esthetician travels all over to deliver glowy complexions to stars such as Anna Wintour, Kim Kardashian, and Glossier founder Emily Weiss. (She delightfully dubs it getting #Czeched on Instagram.) In 2015, she moved her New York spa to a 2,000-square-foot space in Dallas’ Victory Park, complete with an in-house edit of some of her favorite products.
Czech’s online presence has continued to grow in the three years since she relocated, along with her ecommerce edit, which currently features brands such as Vintner’s Daughter, Malin + Goetz, Grown Alchemist, Hairstory, and her own facial massager (also carried at Violet Grey) designed to promote drainage and lifting. And just this week, she launched the CzechList, an editorial site where the sought-after esthetician can share her thoughts on skincare, health, and beyond.
It’s a move that makes Czech, who’s currently garnered upwards of 35,000 Instagram followers, more of a lifestyle brand, and even more aligned with the Violet Greys of the world. The two are completely different beauty entities, of course. Violet Grey initially launched as a blog, Cassandra Grey’s The Violet Files, before its ecommerce site launched in 2014. Czech is first and foremost an esthetician — one that likely participates in Violet Grey’s testing process, The Violet Code — and is only just getting into the blog game. But both Czech and Violet Grey are aspirational names you can trust for up-and-coming brands, and now, they’re both a source of insight for beauty advice and trends.
It also makes Czech more accessible. We may not at all be able to afford a $550 LED facial, but we can still interact with her on the personable CzechList, which features categories such as “Skin Science,” “Tips of the Trade,” “Joanna Loves,” and “Ask Joanna.”
And for those of us in Dallas, we can always visit Czech’s studio, if only to pick up a Czech-approved deodorant or celeb-cosigned serum. Anything you find is surely up to The Violet Code.
