Kathryn Dickinson brings curated, healthy beauty to Denver.
Kathryn Dickinson. PHOTO COURTESY OF BRANDS
It all started with a shampoo bottle. Denver-based beauty industry veteran Kathryn Dickinson had just purged her kitchen of processed foods after a health scare when she took a closer look at the label on her salon-brand suds. “It was all toxic sludge,” she says. After spending multiple months (and several hundred dollars) combing through natural alternatives, scouring the fine print and testing products, she recognized the need for “one place to go and know that everything is safe but that everything also still works.” Today, Aillea (aillea.com), the award-winning clean beauty supplier Dickinson launched in 2014, is that place.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BRANDS
Dickinson curates the shop’s selection of nontoxic skincare, haircare and makeup products to ensure they meet the highest standards for clean beauty while also matching her discerning criteria for quality and effectiveness. She personally tests each product. The effort has earned Aillea a coveted spot in Well + Good’s list of top natural beauty stores and Goop’s Denver City guide. “Clients don’t have to sit there with a magnifying glass and a PhD in chemistry to know if a product is good or not,” Dickinson says. “We’ve done the research for them.”
Indeed, customers who enter Aillea’s four retail locations—including one light-filled store in Denver’s Cherry Creek North neighborhood—find respected (and often celebrity-endorsed) brands like Vintner’s Daughter, Ursa Major, and Colorado’s own Osmia Organics. Products cater to a range of beauty needs from sensitive skin and anti-aging to full glam makeup and indulgent body serums—and they work without parabens, sulfates, endocrine disruptors, and other harmful chemicals and carcinogens. “All of our products leave you better than when they found you,” Dickinson says. “Clean beauty is for everybody.”
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