Bottling Ancient Secrets

Few marketing strategies are as successful as those that appeal to a woman's vanity. As India has opened its economy over the past decade, companies like L'Oreal and Revlon have inked impressive profits by importing Western-developed antiwrinkle creams and shampoos previously available only on the black market. Now, predictably perhaps, traditional Indian beauty treatments based on the ancient principles of Ayurveda are winning converts in the West. Though these practices have been around for 5,000 years, they're new here, and that's enough to inspire women once content to describe their skin as dry or oily to discover whether their dosha--or spiritual energy--can best be classified as kapha (earth), vata (air) or pitta (fire).

Ayurveda, Sanskrit for wisdom of life, is purported to be the oldest holistic approach to health and well-being. The basic principle states that each person is governed by the three dashes of kapha, vata and pitta. Though everyone has a dominant dosha, which influences everything from skin type to personality, keeping all three in balance is the key to inner health and outer beauty. Yoga is one element of Ayurveda, and its popularity in the States in recent years has led to greater interest in Eastern spiritualism and increased opportunities for Western marketing.

In March the Body Shop introduced a line of Ayurvedic-inspired products (a pillow spray for kaphas runs $18), and last October a three-woman team, including model Christy Turlington, launched the upscale skin-care regimen Sundari, from which any pitta can select a $52 moisturizer. Both lines use essential oils and herbs cultivated predominantly in India. Says Sundari co-founder Ayla Hussain, who grew up in Pakistan and attended Harvard Business School: "We take ideas that are thousands of years old and use modern technology to maximize their efficacy." Lindsay Oliver, manager of an Ayurvedic spa called the Raj in Fairfield, Iowa, says when the resort opened seven years ago, she couldn't get magazines interested. Now, she reports, "Vogue calls us."

But could the newfound commercial attention hurt the cause? "Sometimes, I wish the word dosha had never been discovered in the West," says Shafi Saxena, who founded Better Botanicals with her husband in 1995. The company's herbal products are based on Ayurvedic tenets. "I'm afraid it will discredit the system. Look at aromatherapy: everything that smelled good was aromatherapeutic." So while Ayurveda has lasted millennums in India, it remains to be seen how long it can withstand the American attention span.

--By Michele Orecklin