Crystals boom in luxury wellness movement
WHEN Emily Satloff stops to hydrate during Pilates, she sips from a water bottle filled with rose quartz and amethyst. The goal? To add a dose of healing to her workout. “I feel calmer while drinking from my crystal water bottle,” said Satloff, the designer of the jewellery line Larkspur & Hawk.
Before bedtime, Nadine Abramcyk, a founder of Tenoverten, an all-natural luxury nail salon, puts her iPhone on airplane mode and covers it with a shungite crystal to reduce radiation. She discovered the ritual in a Google search one sleepless night. “I’m not someone who can turn off completely, and I was sleeping with my phone by my head and waking up all the time,” Abramcyk said. “Now I sleep much better.”
Ana Zawacki lines crystals along the mantel in her bedroom whenever there’s a new moon. She also clutches pyrite and citrine when walking to a big meeting or appointment.
“They help me to manifest my goals and set intentions for the day ahead,” said Zawacki, a restaurant publicist.
Crystals, that onetime hippy-dippy hobby, never really went away, but now they are practically as common as drinking green juice and practising yoga. Somewhere between smudge sticks, sound baths and adaptogens, crystals are the latest accessory borrowed f r o m E a s t e r n medicinal philosophies to have penetrated the luxury wellness market, where stylish women are as eager to buy a giant rose quartz as they are the newest Gucci slide.
While little, if any, scientific evidence exists to substantiate crystals’ efficacy, they are extolled as beneficial to physical and emotional healing.
Cr y s t a l s , i t s e e ms, appeal to those who seek calm in a chaotic world: a counterbalance to the anxiety induced by nonstop news and feelings of Instagram FOMO.
Ruby Warrington, the author of the new book Material Girl, Mystical World: The Now Age Guide to a HighVibe Life, which traces the origins of the high-end wellness boom, offered a theory. “As our lives have become increasingly intertwined with technology, we’re yearning for practices that r e c o n n e c t u s t o humanity or the earth,” she said.
“Especially in times of uncertainty, crystals are an easy access point to tapping into a New Age movement that has experienced a modern upgrade.”
War r i n g t o n c i t e d Gwyneth Paltrow as the avatar for the new luxury wellness movement. Her recent In Goop Health summit, with lectures by integrative medical professionals as well as crystal therapy and aura photography, sold out within days. Clearly it’s no longer enough to have shiny hair and c h i s e l e d a b s ; o u r c h a k r a s mu s t b e aligned and our energy paths cleared.
“It’s great to have designer trinkets,” Warrington said. “But what are they worth if they can’t bring truth or happiness?”