New York City Walking Tour Offers Around the World Beauty Experience

From soaks used in Turkish hammams to Amazonian body oils, Around the World Beauty’s NYC tour offers an inside look at beauty rituals that shed light on ancient cultures. All stops are located in New York’s walkable SoHo and West and East Village neighborhoods. Whether you’re looking for a more rejuvenating bathing regime or the latest buildable foundation, you’ll learn how to up your self-care game and stay on trend with current cosmetic looks from around the world.

“New York City is a hub for global beauty,” says Stephanie Flor, who launched Around the World Beauty five years ago. The makeup artist and travel enthusiast has hosted beauty conferences and retreats in Morocco, India and Mexico (Kyoto is slated for 2020) and says her hometown of New York was a logical place to expand her interactive events. “Women are traveling more and more,” she says. “What makes us feel at home when we’re in a foreign place is the beauty and fashion we see when we’re abroad.”

Beauty rituals can be very grounding, depending on your mindset. When you indulge in beauty rituals as a way to self-care and bring inner glow outward, they can, as Flor explains, help travelers feel at home or “in their own skin,” when seeking new adventures. Balancing the unknown with minor comforts of familiarity can help make for a more fulfilling trip. This mindset also means eschewing beauty as an exercise in striving for perfection.

For beauty junkies, traveling to new places also means learning about products and rituals that might be centuries old, but are new to them. “Storytelling sets everything apart,” says Flor. “What’s the story behind a product? With so many products out there, the story can make all the difference in finding what’s right for your routine.” Of course if you can’t travel the world but are still curious, a beauty product with an intriguing ancestry can offer a taste of a foreign place.

That’s where Around the World Beauty’s New York walking tours come in. “People join the tour for a shopping experience, but end up switching their mindset,” says Flor. “My beauty philosophy looks at the spiritual or inner beauty and examines how nature can affect your routine.”

Flor stops at the Alchemist’s Kitchen on East Second Street, an emporium for plant-based beauty products. Here, Flor teaches participants how to tap into spiritual beauty, with products like New York’s own Monk Oil, a skin potion that’s “conjured” in New York on New Moons and Full Moons, and Anima Mundi’s anti-aging Curam Elixir from Costa Rica. Other spiritual beauty stops on the tour include destinations that specialize in bathing practices. “In New York, people get in and get out of the shower, which isn’t the most relaxing. Globally, bathing is about purifying yourself on a daily basis.”

Flor also encourages people to get in tune with surface beauty, stopping at Credo Beauty on Prince Street. Here people can shop for highly pigmented, chemical-free RMS products. This fall, Flor favors a deep red lip, like RMS’s Firestarter lipstick. “As we prepare for a New York winter, you can keep lipstick creamy by adding balm or oil to your lips after application,” she explains.

To fully embrace your environment – the third fold of Flor’s beauty philosophy – the tour concludes at Le Botaniste where “a glass of wine gets blood circulating and food nourishes what’s on the inside.”

All tour guests receive a 10 to 15 percent discount on all in-store purchases as well as some samples to take home.

Find more information, including fall dates and booking information for Around the World Beauty NYC Walking Journeys at Flor’s website.