Shop Good Brings Clean Beauty to North Park
Owner Leah Kirpalani
“You can have both.” That’s the clean-beauty battle cry literally written on the walls at Shop Good, Leah Kirpalani’s North Park boutique dedicated to eco-friendly skin care and makeup.
“It means you can live the life of your dreams—go out with your girlfriends and indulge in a couple of bottles of wine—while still making your health, healing, and body a priority,” she says.
This realistic approach to holistic wellness, developed during her own healing journey through chronic illness, is what led Kirpalani to launch Good Life. Started as an e-commerce site and blog in 2015, it garnered a loyal following—over 14,000 on Instagram, in fact. For most of her 20s, Kirpalani suffered hair loss, weight gain, and cystic acne while working as a merchandiser for Gap in San Francisco. When doctors shrugged and told her to restrict the simple things that made her happy—bottles of wine with girlfriends, for instance—she tried a holistic wellness route, using nontoxic products and natural supplements to heal her body. The outcome? Homeostasis.
Walk through the glass door of Shop Good today, and you’re met with a 750-square-foot tour of the products and processes that helped her heal.
Shop Good Brings Clean Beauty to North Park
Palate Polish vegan nail polish
One wall houses the main pillars of her brand: bath and body, wellness, and skin care. True Natural self-tanning lotion, Emerita organic cotton tampons, and hydrosols by Wildcare top the shelves. An adjacent beauty bar with sink encourages guests to “touch and feel and smell everything.”
The center of the store is dedicated to makeup, featuring indie brands like RMS Beauty, Alima Pure, and TMF, an Australian brand for whom Kirpalani is the first American carrier.
“We definitely did a refresh knowing Good Life was going to become 3-D,” she says. Innersense Beauty hair products, for example, were first introduced for the retail location.
Shop Good Brings Clean Beauty to North Park
Merchandise lines the entry
Another facet of transitioning from site to storefront was onboarding Mo Trezise, a licensed aesthetician, massage therapist, and Chinese medicine magnate who heads up a treatment room in the back of the shop. There, she conducts customized 45- to 75-minute Botnia brand facials that involve deep cleanses, exfoliating treatments, and, for the longer services, extractions and a hand and foot massage.
This spring, Kirpalani hopes to bring holistic coaching into the store, too, offering wellness consultations and implementing skin and lifestyle surveys.
“We want to provide a one-stop shop for products that both heal and beautify… because you can have both.”
3030 North Park Way, North Park good_life.co
The Eco Effect
Shop Good is stocked with plenty of San Diego–based brands—and not just for beauty
Handcrafted using natural, vegan, earth-derived ingredients, Zabana Essentials carries bath, body, face, hair, and hygiene products. On its laundry list of don’ts are animal ingredients, parabens, and synthetic dyes. Containing zero chemical preservatives, products last between six months to one year.
Rooted in reversing poor health with diet and nutrition, Sunfood sells superfoods like Himalayan pink sea salt, chia seeds, and cacao powder containing organic and non-GMO ingredients that claim to fight illness, increase longevity, boost immunity, and increase energy.
The mixologists behind pop-up Paru Tea blend organic, energy-boosting loose leaf and cold brew teas in black, green, and herbal varieties. Find flavors like ginger spiced chai, cacao + chicory “coffee,” and green rose on Paru’s e-boutique that launched in November.
From powders to sprays and capsules, Ora Organics makes plant-based supplements with all the bells and whistles: They’re sustainable, vegan, non-GMO, dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, and have no synthetic ingredients. An in-house chef ensures they taste good, too.
Shop Good Brings Clean Beauty to North Park
Photos by Natasha Boote
