Greetings from Xi’an, China,
We serendipitously got to meet up with Owen’s ex-boss Davin here because of our last newsletter! This region’s known for its deep history, delicious street foods, and one of the world’s “most dangerous hikes” — the Huashan Plank Walk.
It got our blood pumping for sure, but there wasn’t any real danger to it – hundreds of people do it a day. It’s not that bad unless you recklessly unclip like this dude. In fact, they changed the harness so it’s now impossible to unclip.
This newsletter we’ll catch up from post-Europe til China, sharing some updates from a quick stop in SF and a whirlwind tour of the beauty industry in Seoul. This Korea visit changed Owen’s opinion on skincare, so to the men reading this – don’t glaze over just yet!
After Europe, we briefly returned to SF for Outsidelands. Ivy recently started her music festival phase and so many different groups of friends were going that we couldn’t resist.
The timeline also worked out because we needed to stop by the US for a visa visit for…
Owen’s New Job
For the last half a year, Owen has been exploring the climate space, most recently reducing emissions within food. Researching cultivated meats had been fascinating, but Owen felt out of his depth in the chemistry knowledge required to fully grasp the industry and started losing confidence that he’d find a problem with founder-market fit.
Luckily, Jamie found a job made for Owen at Artyc instead. The company is decarbonizing the cold supply chain aka the refrigerated transportation of food and pharmaceuticals. Owen’s been working in the grocery/restaurant/coffee supply chain for the last 6 years, so climate + food + supply chain is basically his trifecta.
It’s been a month now and Owen really likes the work and the people!
The week he started, someone at a dinner party asked what he does for work and Owen felt proud to finally be working in climate, after all the soul searching.
If you want to learn more about Artyc or how to pivot to climate, Owen is more than happy to talk about it!
Food Inspo
Though our SF stay this time was short, we found several moments of inspiration.
The first was a dinner we got invited to called Fancy Scraps Supper Club, a multi course meal centered around food waste. Each dish innovatively used some ingredient that you wouldn’t typically think to use like a crunchy topping made from potato peels and a pesto made from the leafy green parts of carrots.
The meal was on a whole other level from the one Jon and Owen ran. They served it out of a real restaurant space seating 45 guests (vs we served 8 in a home setting), and had brand partners that provided ingredients like Minus Coffee, a beanless coffee, which they used in an espresso martini.
Side note: if you’re looking for beanless coffees, we met up with friends Nicolette and DJ in Copenhagen and DJ is working on a cool company doing this called Prefer. Minus tasted excessively sweet to mask the flavor. We’re confident DJ’s product will be better!
Ivy commented that (from a totally unbiased perspective) our tasting menu told the climate story better (shout to Jamie’s front of house), but Jon didn’t PM hard enough since we didn’t have brand partners. We’ll have to change that in our next one!
The second food inspiration we had in SF was watching The Bear Season 2. If you haven’t seen the show, Owen cannot recommend it highly enough. He says it’s the best thing he’s seen this year. Ivy cannot comment because she doesn’t watch what Owen recommends.
One episode from it led him to read Unreasonable Hospitality, which he also can’t stop raving about. It’s a great read for anyone that does any kind of work that interacts with other people (everyone..?). This one Ivy did read the Shortform summary of and ended up gifting a copy to one of her employees who leads teen programs.
All of these will definitely influence the next tasting menu, but beyond that, Owen feels a mindset shift towards striving for excellence. Not just in cooking, but in other aspects of his life too. We’ll see if that goes anywhere.
Beauty in Korea
For the last week of August, we went to Korea so Ivy and Yifan could invest in their anti-aging to gracefully transition into their 30s.
If you want the exact itinerary and Ivy’s recommendations, DM her for them.
Preparation
To prep for this trip, Ivy spent hours scrolling Chinese social media app 小红书 for the best treatments to get done in Seoul. Very few blogs exist on the Western internet.
Two hashtags stood out. One was #首尔变美, which literally translates to #TurnBeautifulInSeoul
It showed so many girls getting treatments like microneedling, botox, fillers, aquapeels, inmode lifting, skin boosters…
After so much time scrolling Asian social media, Ivy thought everyone in Asia was now super hot after not being there for 4 years.
Just shows how harmful social media can be if even almost-30-year-old Ivy started comparing herself to the beauty standards of heavily filtered online media.
Another hashtag Ivy found through discovery was #把老公熬成爹, which translates to #WaitingForHusbandToTurnIntoDad
Ivy has nagged Owen for years to take better care of his skin, but it’s been a hard habit for him to adjust. He’d spent the first several decades of his life just washing his face with shampoo, how was he supposed to change that?
Ivy got him face wash and moisturizer long ago, but he’d use them once, then forget about it for weeks til she reminded him again.
After seeing the photos from that hashtag and hearing repeatedly in Korea about all the problems he had that Ivy didn’t (spoilers), Owen finally recognized that if he didn’t take better care of himself, he might start being mistaken for Ivy’s dad in a few years.
Owen is clearly traumatized since just this week, he’s pointed out 2 couples on the street where he couldn’t tell if the pair were partners or dad and daughter (they were partners based on their interactions).
Luckily, Korea understands this problem for men. The top selling product at Olive Young was a 7 in 1 post-cleansing product. When Yifan asked for a recommendation for her partner for oily skin, the store clerk asked his age. Upon hearing that he’s almost 30, she recommended he get the anti-wrinkle version instead of oily skin… Owen got that one too.
Treatments
In Korea, we did scalp analysis/treatments, skin analysis/treatments, color analysis, makeup lessons (for Yifan and Ivy), and got our hair done.
Let’s start with skincare.
There are hundreds (likely thousands) of medspas in Korea with most of them in the Gangnam area. Ivy was prepared and booked an Airbnb right in the epicenter.
We went to explore 3 clinics - Lienjang, Lamiche, and Ppeum and ended up getting everything at Lienjang.
At the check-in table, you can see previous guests’ names, phone numbers, and birthdays - 90% of them were born in 1983 or 1993 (like Yifan and Ivy!) with a few in 1984 and 1994. It’s that turning 30 or 40 crisis eh?
After check-in at each clinic, you get to consult with a doctor on your procedures. At Lamiche, you take photos of your face in a box and you’re shown the sebum and clogged pores as little orangey specs.
Ivy’s was taken 3 days after an aquapeel cleansing facial so this isn’t a fair comparison but you can see Owen’s face light up.
The doctor immediately pointed out the redness, pigmentation unevenness, large pores, clogged pores, and beginning-to-sag cheeks.
We both got an aquapeel for $50 USD and extractions for blackheads (another $50). An aquapeel is Korea’s version of hydrafacial which is at least $150-$300 in the US!
Meanwhile, Ivy went ham on attacking the fine lines on her face with 6 different face procedures (costed <$800 USD vs. $$$$$$ in the US) and laser hair removal ($5 per area vs. up to $200 per area in the US).
Don’t worry, she still looks the same. Owen can’t even tell the difference!
Here’s a list of everything Ivy got with the approx time it took:
Aquapeel (15 min)
Extractions (15 min)
Rejuvern Skin Booster, a micro-needling of serum under the skin to hydrate and improve skin quality with the goal of reducing fine lines - this one hurt like a b*tch (1-2 min)
Botox to freeze frown lines, forehead lines, crows feet, and under eyes (1-2 min)
Glass Skin facial, another microneedling of PHA to hydrate skin to give dewy and glowing look (5 min)
Some cryo facial to calm down face after all the procedures (30 min)
All the procedures we did were preventative — hydrating our skin, baby botox that freezes muscles so they don’t form deeper lines, and cleansing.
Ivy had such a good experience that she immediately did 2 things:
Plan for the next trip to Seoul the next time we’re in Asia in February and bi-annual trips from now on
Invest in Upkeep, a marketplace for medspa treatments that started from LA. If you’re interested, the SPV we invested in is still open here.
Working on our scalp was similar to our skin.
We went to WTMethode to get a scalp analysis in which we discovered scalps are super gross looking.
The poor scalp doctor (who had EXCELLENT hair) was gasping the whole time at Owen’s head and how he washed his hair by scratching his scalp furiously with his fingernails (don’t do that!)
His problems were “complex” and numerous: UV damage, inflammation, hair loss, balding, dandruff, and some other things we don’t even remember.
Ivy had fewer problems, mostly psoriasis (a chronic patchy skin disease) and minor dandruff.
We were ushered to a very thorough scalp treatment and bought some products like good shampoo and conditioner, hair serums, and medication for psoriasis that will last for 6 months (when Ivy plans on returning!)
It was expensive — ~$700 per person for treatment and products — but between healthy hair vs $700, we’d rather have the hair! We’re starting to notice that amongst our age group, hair makes the biggest difference in looking young and healthy. And the scalp doctor wasn’t at all pushy, so we felt pretty good about her recommendations.
Next, we did a color analysis.
Ivy did two, and got different results… They were similar in recommendations, but looks like it’s not an exact science.
The color analysis first determines if you have warm or cool toned skin. This will determine the makeup you buy and your color tones.
Owen and Ivy both have cool toned skin, Yifan has warm toned skin. At makeup stores, many Korean brands actually mark which one of their products look good on which toned skin!
Here are some of the end results of what colors look best on us.
What’s also super helpful is they tell you which colors DON’T look good (makes your skin tone darker and overall vibe dimmer). Turns out Owen looks best in blue and worst in green. He only has two sweaters, can you guess which colors they are?
Ivy’s pretty proud that the dress shirts she bought for Owen were amongst his best colors — coral pink and light blue!
Finally, makeup lessons.
In the world of kpop idols, k-dramas, and Korean beauty — of course Koreans really know how to do their makeup! Ivy and Yifan took 2 makeup lessons.
Our favorite one was at Chahong Room where there was a makeup artist teacher and a note taker that wrote down every instruction and product used on every part of the face!
This was super fun because we got to talk about what our main goals were. For example, Ivy has eyelids that turn downwards. She never knew which angle to draw her eyeliner so that her eyes don’t look droopy.
We learned the best way to draw in natural brows, under eye eyeshadow, and how to put on blush and contour for Asian faces. Turns out it’s different from how you do white faces!
You can learn 2 different looks - one on each side of your face. Yifan got a night look vs. day look while Ivy tried out different eyeshadow colors for two natural looks.
While Ivy and Yifan were getting their makeup done, Owen got a haircut. Both the stylist and the person who washed his hair told him that he needs to take better care of his scalp. He just started trying, don’t have to rub salt in the wound!
And we’re almost caught up again! Next newsletter we’ll talk about what we’ve seen to be different this time around in China, as well as an interesting hospital experience.
Onwards,
Owen and Ivy