I believe that the world, especially now, listens and understands things through commerce. We want to shop. That’s capitalism! I get that—I like objects, too. But at the same time, the version of capitalism that we’ve been sold is broken. We exist in a system that puts profit over people. And everyone seems to accept it and go, “Okay, I get it. You’re taking advantage of me. Thank you, sir. Can I have another?”
Historically, as a people, we’ve been fine saying one thing, feeling another, and doing yet another. All three can be different, and that’s the way society has functioned. But for me, personally, what I feel, what I say, and what I do have to be aligned. I knew that, but I’d been putting it off. I kept saying, “I’ll figure this out another time. I’ll deal with this later.” And then one day, I realized, “Oh, it’s later.” It had become this heavy, heavy weight. So I pulled everything from the stores and I went on sabbatical.
When I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my time, I kept thinking back to this 10-day-long pop-up we had hosted under the High Line in 2010. My mother served tea. My friends came back every day. We sold our jewelry and other things. It was a great success, both financially and in terms of how we felt about what we created. It was 10 days of bringing people together, and giving them the space, permission, and opportunity to slow down. It dawned on me then that I’d been living with the answer for so long: wherever I went to work with my craftsmen—whether it was the cashmere family in India, or the jewelers, or the goldsmiths—I was offered tea. (The irony, of course, is that it would drive me crazy when my craftsmen would take all their tea breaks.) It was right there under my nose. It was only when I stepped away from the noise that I could see it.
I spent a few years sourcing incredible teas. We found deep Earl Greys, dark and grassy Sencha from Japan, perfectly floral Oolong from Taiwan. I left a successful business to start a new one I knew nothing about. That brought a great deal of stress into my life. Everything was on my shoulders. There was no moment of pause. I was essentially breaking down. I was broken. I went to healers from Mexico, sound healings in L.A., and acupuncturists on the Lower East Side and in Toronto. Herbalists. Nutritionists. I worked for months on rebuilding myself. And when I came out of that, I realized, “Oh my god, what do people do that don’t have access to this? This is insanity. How do people pull through?” And I realized tea is the longest-running medicinal wellness product there is. It’s the second most consumed beverage in the world. And that led us to find a team of herbalists to help us create botanical teas that help us be better.