“Absolutely LOVE the behind the scenes!! Incredible how you balance everything and I can relate with that crazy life and experiences🙈” - HSR Angel

ICYMI

Hello! Hi! Happy Sunday HSR!

I am writing this to you after my first Turkish hammam experience on the roof of our hotel in the Old Town of Istanbul, listening to the call to prayer echo across the city, and I am so grateful to be able to see so much of the world and share what sticks with me here.

I swear, I integrate into new cultures faster than anyone I know and it comes down to a few very simple things. I always take public transportation at least 2x, I find someone in my network who knows the local spots, and I figure out what the most iconic wellness experience is to that culture. For Turkey, I quickly learned that answer is a Turkish Hammam. So I arranged for a few Turkish friends to spend the afternoon with me at one.

As a self-declared global sauna, cold plunge, massage, and lymphatic drainage enthusiast, I had genuinely never experienced anything quite like it and I am glad I walked in with no expectations.

Stripping down to a pair of cotton underwear they hand you and having a woman exfoliate, bathe, and scrub every inch of your body while your friends are beside you is, to put it mildly, a freeing experience. But when I was done I was completely obsessed with how I felt, both physically in my skin and emotionally in my soul. It was a kind of healing I have not experienced before. My skin genuinely looked and felt better than it has in years.

And when I sat with it, it made complete sense. Communal bathing has been part of the human experience across almost every culture that has ever existed, from Ancient Rome and the Ottoman Empire to Japanese onsen, Finnish saunas, Russian banyas, Korean jjimjilbangs, and Native American sweat lodges. The throughline is identical across all of them: heat, water, community, and presence.

The need is ancient, yet I cannot fully explain if America is ready for it. Ready or not, it is coming regardless, and when I came back to write about my hammam experience I found the internet equally obsessed. A Women's Health article dropped two days ago covering what they are calling America's bathhouse boom, and when I started looking into the investment side of it, the numbers tell you everything you need to know.

Bathhouse, the Brooklyn-born luxury bathhouse operator, raised $35 million in a round led by Imaginary Ventures, the firm known for backing Glossier, Skims, Kosas, and Reformation, bringing their total funding to over $76 million. Othership, the Toronto-based wellness brand backed by Shawn Mendes and the founders of SoulCycle, has raised roughly $20 million to fuel its US expansion.

But it’s more than that - it even connects to something I’ve been quietly tracking in beauty industry. Body care is having its biggest moment ever, starting to outpace both skincare and cosmetics as the category consumers are most excited about. Prestige body care in North America is up 25%, projected to surpass $37 billion by 2029, with 82% of women globally now wanting skincare-level results for their body. The hammam is essentially the original body care ritual and no product on a shelf comes close to replicating what an hour in one of those rooms does to your skin.

I told our Turkish friend on the spot to open something similar in LA or NYC because I can feel it. The quiet, growing hunger for social experiences that do not involve alcohol, nighttime, or the isolation of a screen. This newsletter exists to keep you ahead of the consumer trends and behavioral shifts that will change how we live, and this one is yours to know right now, whether you’re a paid subscriber or not.

PS. I heard you loud and clear from the vlog 2 weeks ago and we are BACK with another one!! I am working on figuring out ramping up to weekly vlogs but for now feel confident that I can hand bi-weekly!! I hope you enjoy ❤

In case you missed it, last week I sat down with Aimee Smale, founder of Odd Muse, for my first ever London studio recording. She shared how she built a $30M fashion brand with no investors, turning £12K into one of the UK's fastest growing bootstrapped businesses through the power of community.

We talked about building a personal brand, doing scary things before you're ready, and why you don't need permission to start. If you're dreaming about launching a business, this is an episode you won't want to miss.💞

all the brands, people, places, things we’re gossiping about this week

Women’s Health & Beauty