Photos: Jennilee Marigomen
We discovered Ro as a customer of the LBF Shop and quickly realized her love for thoughtfully curating stems to put throughout her home in Downtown Vancouver. It was clear from the outset she was the candidate to help us kick off the launch of our LBF House Flowers subscriptions as well as being part of our LBF community series.
Ro is the 30-year-old Founder of The Wilds Skincare — a clean, genderless, and step-simplified skincare line that launched earlier this year.In just a short time, The Wilds has achieved some exciting milestones including a social media launch campaign that reached just over 5M Instagram users, a finalist title in the Pure Beauty Global Awards for Best New Clean Skincare and a few celebrity shoutouts along the way.
Beyond ethical skincare, The Wilds aims is to cultivate a community that fosters unapologetic confidence, self-acceptance and the permission to be happily wild.
It was very clear to us during our conversations on the photo shoot how passionate Ro is about creating a skincare line that paired everything back to just the key ingredients your skin needs and keeping the routine as simple as possible. Follow @thewildsskincare
Name: Ro
Occupation: Founder, The Wilds Skincare
Hobbies: Growing up in Vancouver, between the mountains and ocean, was incredibly influential. My time in nature — at the beach, walking through a trail, strolling the seawall — is when I feel the most restored. If not that, I love cooking (usually Italian) with some tequila (odd pairing, I know) and good company. I am extremely ritualistic so my hobbies are consistent to the time of day and week. Saturday mornings are spent doing Pilates followed by a coffee and a walk through Kits point with my dog child. Sunday’s are the exact same except I swap pilates for bagels at Siegal’s.
An early olfactive (scent) memory?I am proudly Kurdish-Iranian for many reasons, but at the top of the list is our cuisine. Fragrant, flavourful and warm. I can distinctly remember meals in my childhood home and the way our home would smell while my mum was cooking. You know when you hear a song and it immediately takes you to a time and place? When my mum cooks traditional dishes, it immediately evokes a feeling of nostalgia.
Favourite scent? I find myself drawn to muskier, earthier scents. My home usually smells of Sandalwood, Patchouli and Cedarwood. I love the juxtaposition in a room, when your eyes are met with beautiful, bright and dramatic florals but the scent of a room remaining natural, woodsy and grounding.
Favourite flower? Gosh this feels like having to pick a favourite song… almost impossible. My “favourite" is always changing. Last year, I was obsessed with Chrysanthemum’s. Lately, Calla Lily’s and Cockscomb’s.
How would you describe your interior style? I’m incredibly satisfied by juxtaposition. Timeless classic interiors paired with contemporary furniture. Feminine florals paired with masculine scents. Raw materials/accessories paired with refined clean lines. There is a fluidity I find in all creative areas of my life when I lean in to the contrast. Since launching The Wilds, I’ve also found myself to be extremely risk tolerant. Starting a business and taking that chance was one of my biggest fears and now that I’ve done it, I feel thrilled by the feeling of “having the fear but doing it anyway” and has manifested in business, fashion, interiors, hobbies.
How do flowers play a role in your space? During my final year in Toronto, where I spent the last 5 years before moving back to Vancouver, I lived next to this beautiful boutique florist. With such rigid lockdown regulations, there was very little we were able to do/very few places we were able to go. What started as a way to just get out of the house and bring some life into our apartment turned out to be what I would consider one of my most favourite rituals. Each week or two, I would go in, and stem by stem, create little floral stories for each of my vessels at home.
How do flowers play a role within your community? This answer might be too literal of an interoperation, but living in the DT core, flowers, parks, trees, landscaped sidewalks, all bring life and energy back to an environment that can often times feel manufactured or produced.
Is there a season you favour? I just typed and erased 4 different answers to this question so I think I know my answer — I love them all. I love our lush Vancouver springs. Our colourful autumns. Our summers spent out in the ocean and out winters in the mountains.
How do you think you express love? I am a words of affirmation person for sure. It’s how I love to love and I how I love to be loved.
Where are you drawing inspiration from at present? I am deeply inspired by nature, now and always. The Wilds was quite literally conceptualized as an ode to the freeness that comes from being deep in the wilds — by definition: “a large area of land where plants, trees, etc., grow freely : wilderness.”. I wanted The Wilds, both as a community and a result, to cultivate a feeling of unapologetic confidence and the ability to celebrate whoever you are, however you are.
Where do you go to be with nature? Near the water where I can smell the ocean, at the beach where I can feel the sand and in the mountains/forest where I am reminded of how much beautiful wildlife exists, right in our backyard.