RIPTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Balsam fir and fresh air — crisp mornings in Ripton set the perfect scene for Priya Narasimhan to create her hair, skin, and body care products.
“Every single product I use on my body is something I make,” said Narasimhan, who owns Priya Means Love. While it actually does mean love in Sanskrit, it wasn’t a love of personal products that prompted this business.
“About 20 years ago, I got quite sick. So, I have ME/CFS which is a lot like long COVID,” Narasimhan said. Me/CFS stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome. It can make functioning, even in the most basic of ways, exhausting and sometimes impossible.
“In kind of managing that, I had to figure out what was making me feel worse, what my triggers are and I realized that one of them is synthetic fragrances,” says Narasimhan. Forced to make her own products, and passionate about projects in the kitchen, Narasimhan turned to cold-pressed oils, beeswax, and natural, sometimes locally foraged ingredients to make her goodies.
“I really analogize it to food,” she explained. “When you eat plants, it nourishes your body in all kinds of ways.” After learning the ropes, Narasimhan sound found she was making enough to share. “It was a hobby and I would sell at craft fairs and stuff like that, The business just kind of like [grew] bit by bit as I got healthier.”
The business began back in Maryland about 15 years ago, but Narasimhan moved to Vermont about two years ago. She says the city air proved detrimental to her health, so she swapped the Old Line State for the Green Mountain State. In selling her products here, she’s found that she’s hardly alone.
“I’ve actually met a handful of people who lived in cities but moved, again, because of their chemical sensitivities — which is kind of wild because I kind of thought I was the only one,” she said. Now, she has quite a following in Vermont and beyond, with people buying up each batch of lip balms, B.B. creams, and body and face products.
“And I see it in my customers, you know? You can just see that their skin is just sort of like smoother and happier,” she said. Narasimhan makes natural fragrances, too. They’re all available online and at a variety of markets around the state.
Though the diagnosis that started the company is less than ideal, she’s happy putting natural, organic, good-for-the-soul products into the hands of people who need them. “It’s just very satisfying to take stuff from raw, elemental ingredients and turn it into a finished product that goes out into the world, and it’s incorporated into people’s daily rituals,” she says.
