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Lucire 2005

From humble beginnings to a world-class facialist, Margaret Hema is much more than Liv Tyler’s favourite, writes Jack Yan

Main photograph by the author

Excerpted from the June 2005 issue of Lucire

 


Shop Chantelle on Figleaves

Margaret Hema

Initial capHIS WOULD BE A ROUTINE ARTICLE to talk about Margaret Hema being Liv Tyler’s celebrated facialist. Or that Hema developed her skin care range, now internationally sold, because she had to create products that suited her clients. The trouble is, everyone who has developed their own range has a story along those lines: a celebrity connection, or the use of pure ingredients for sensitive skin. And it would not get to the core of a woman who is, in my experience, the best facialist in the business.
   Like all New Zealanders, you wouldn’t necessarily know of Margaret Hema’s international reputation by visiting her room at the Harbour City Towers, where she has been based since 1988. Formally trained as an æstheticienne, with an aromatherapy back-ground, diplomas and certificates in French and English adorn her wall. In the waiting area are copies of Lucire, Vogue, Tatler and Vanity Fair; little does one know that she’s more than likely had a mention in them.
   If you live in Wellington, and you are in this business, you will have heard of Margaret Hema. Probably most fans of Liv Tyler, her most famous client, have, too. Tyler was such a fan that she flew in three hours early to get a Hema facial, prior to the première of the Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King in 2003. But it took me years to meet her.
   Hema is not surprised when I tell her this, believing all meetings happen when they are supposed to. We nearly met just prior to the launch of Lucire as a print title, when someone incorrectly identified a woman as her at the opening of Soup Fashion Recovery, a vintage clothing boutique. I chatted to the stranger, calling her Margaret, and she didn’t flinch. When my colleague Carolyn Enting of The Dominion Post came in, saying she had met with Hema that morning, we could not work out how she could have been in two places at once.
   These coincidences—slightly quirky stories that you’d expect helmed by Rod Serling—seem to mark Margaret Hema’s career. She began in Wellington, which she describes as a ‘village’.
   Many of the capital city’s powerful women became Hema clients early on, including former Fulbrighter and investigative lawyer Judith Fyfe, of Fyfe and Doherty, who has become her ‘mentor and legal adviser’. On her web site, Lady Southgate, a local society name, is cited as an inspiration.
   ‘Hard Wellingtonians have made me successful,’ Hema confessed at our first interview. But some of these customers reported that, regardless of their toughened exteriors, the traditional brands’ products stung. That led to the development of her first product, the Hema Facial Cleansing Oil, tested on clients such as the Royal New Zealand Ballet. It’s still the first item listed on her brochure, and the one that I sampled first during my Hema facial.
   ‘I created it out of need so I could give the best facial,’ she recalled. ‘I did not create my products for film stars and press. I created them for my loyal Wellington clients. Everybody deserved a good facial. Other products, pre-Hema, were not good enough.’
   If there is such a thing as a knack, then Margaret Hema has it. ‘My technique is deep with pressure-point and lymphatic draining. To work as deep amazes the press [because the] skin is still lucid, translucent and normal. [You] know if the product is not that pure, you’d come up pink.’
   There’s some healing going on there, too—the term magic fingers comes to mind. Her pressure is perfect; the Oil lives up to its promises as a gentle, natural cleanser. Checking out the bottle, the calming green hue comes from pure organic avocado oil—a product that is possibly unique to her range. In any case, Hema now claims to buy the entire cosmetic product output from Avocado Oil New Zealand Ltd. for her skin care line. ‘There’s no green oil like Margaret Hema’s anywhere—that is the way I want to keep it,’ she said.
   Pure organic essential oil of lavender, manuka honey, flax plant extract, kawa-kawa plant extract, kiwi-seed oil and manuka pure essential oil round off some of the more remarkable ingredients, which are so far hand-made in limited quantities by Hema herself.
   ‘The secret is the base oil, not the essential oils,’ she explained. The purity of the oils leads to better absorption: ‘I have an eye for whether something is absorbed.’
   The seven products in Hema’s line are the seven she will stick with. In a move that contrasts remarkably with the large corporations’, Hema does not believe in adding new products with incremental changes. After my facial, I thought, ‘Why tamper with perfection?’ If certain oils have worked on humans centuries ago, it’s a cinch they will work today. The genius—the intellectual property—is in how they are combined.
   Her Millennium Face and Body Oil, Day Crème, Facial Spray, Day Crème SPF 15, Replenishing Night Crème and Hydrating Unguent Masque are the other six, though as Hema was to tell me, there will be a non-skin care range that may bear her name in the very near future.
   The ‘Hema Seven’ are so thoroughly tested nowadays that ‘by the time the film industry came, I had sorted it out.’
   Enting is one fan. ‘Every time I have had a facial and then go to the supermarket to buy a bottle of wine, I get asked for my ID—I’m 35. Her oils feel and smell incredible and visibly plump the skin. Her hydrating masque is wonderful after long-haul flights.’ She is not alone.
   ‘By the time Liv came in February 2000,’ which for Hema was an ‘icing on the cake’ moment, ‘I knew the products would not stink or sting. ‘My client base had proven what I was doing was right.’

Initial capE COMPLETED our interview over half a year later, again down to the divine timing that the universe seems to throw at us. In the interim she had attended the semi-official launch of this title in Wellington, ‘Lucire Salutes Wellington Designers,’ as did her elder daughter, Donyale. She had attended but tended to remain incognito.
   Hema had been to the United Kingdom in the interim—her daughter, Tamara, had been living there. She already had supporters in the UK, thanks to Tamara’s earlier efforts, and the range was already sold there (at Tri-Yoga in Primrose Hill) with much the same positioning as in New Zealand: as premium, high-end products.
   This latest visit buoyed her. She told me on the telephone that she was very happy to be back in New Zealand; the return reiterated how much she loved the country. The journey had been successful, as others fell in love with her technique and products.
   Hari Salem, the celebrated hairdresser in Knightsbridge, had become a retailer, and his staff members have raved about it. Salem himself apparently now uses Hema products in problematic hair. The press, invited by publicist Jori White, became converts, with Hema showing everyone from the newspapers to Tatler, I-D, Bride’s, Cosmopolitan UK, Harper’s & Queen, Condé Nast Traveller and British Vogue. A new fan emerged: socialite, former Ralph Lauren model and Tatler editor-at-large Saffron Aldridge.
   But Hema saved her biggest news for last: a make-up range, which will be announced shortly. While there are aspects of it that were off the record, the range is being developed with a big name; and in other aspects, like the existing skin care range, it is a family affair.

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Jack Yan is founding publisher of Lucire.

 

‘By the time Liv [Tyler] came in February 2000,’ which for Hema was an ‘icing on the cake’ moment, ‘I knew the products would not stink or sting. ‘My client base had proven what I was doing was right’

Liv Tyler

Saffron Aldridge

MAIN PHOTOGRAPH: Margaret Hema. ABOVE, FROM TOP: Liv Tyler at the première of The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King. Saffron Aldridge in an earlier Ralph Lauren campaign, and a new Hema convert.

Hema Products official site

 

 

 

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Lucire: fashion magazine homeLucire Fashion FeaturesLucire Living and Beauty Lucire Volante: travel, accommodation guide Lucire fashion news, bulletins and events Fashion shopping guide and directory
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