Sweet Smell of Success

It is the standard American bedtime cartoon: the wife whose cold-cream-slathered face makes a death mask look comparatively pert, and the husband who can't get the light out fast enough to miss the sight. These days the man in the picture would do well to take a second look — not to mention a healthy sniff. Chances are that the lady is no longer mulched in mineral oil and petroleum jelly but gently steeped in camomile tea and elder-flower lotion. The bedroom air, once heady with hints of lye, is more likely flavored with the scent of fresh strawberries, lemons, grapefruit and peaches. For the natural-cosmetics industry, the fragrance is pleasingly identifiable: it is the sweet smell of success.

Cucumber Cream. Organic materials have been used in cosmetics for years, but only in small amounts (to lend eye lids "the impudent luster of fresh celery") and always with a chemical preservative added to extend shelf life. Today, as a direct byproduct of the back-to-nature health-food boom and the growing concern about ecology, beauty products of purely natural ingredients are being marketed at an ever-increasing rate. Explains Los Angeles Cos metologist Gwen Seager Taylor: "Regular commercial products may not be harmful, but they are like eating white bread with preservatives added. Natural cosmetics, like whole-grain bread, give you back what nature gave you." Where as a year ago cucumber cleansing cream was obtainable only in a health-food store or an esoteric pharmacy, now there are scores of brands to choose from, all available in the natural-cosmetics shops that have sprung up across the country and in many drugstores and major department stores as well.

It is the smaller, independent manu facturers who provide the most comprehensive and insistently organic cosmetics. Gwen Seager Taylor's line — Cosmetic Originals by Gwen—is distributed through health-food stores in California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New England. Gwen lipsticks ($2.50) are naturally colored with extracts of carrots, beets, eggplant, raspberries and blueberries; her face powder is a translucent blend of rice and corn. Of particular benefit to smog-bound skins are the natural-enzyme creams ($6) that "literally digest pollution" by dissolving toxic oils. Sallow, freckled or fading complexions are promised brighter days with Lights Up, a lotion of organic cucumbers and lemons.

In Manhattan, a tiny, green velvet-walled shop called "i" is only five weeks old and already doing close to $3,000 business a week in items like Quince Seed Conditioner ($3), Papaya Night Cream ($9.50) and Wild Raisin Eye Shadow ($5). Co-Owners Sandy Oringer and Lois Muller started out with a mailorder offer—$2 for a jar of strawberry cleansing cream, grapefruit freshener and lemon moisturizer—that drew such response that they formulated an entire line of raw-juice and oil-based cosmetics and found a chemist to put it together.