Style: June 16, 2020

STYLE | feature 17
THE NATURAL SOAP MAKER
Kirstin Dana’s battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma saw a surprise
skincare business emerge from the experience.
The range of products Kirstin creates are all free from nasties.
Kirstin Dana sat on her bathroom
floor with a laptop and the contents
of her cupboard strewn around her.
It was 2012 and her skin was suffering
badly from the assault of radiation and
chemotherapy fed into her body to
treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was
looking for something gentle to soothe
and cleanse her skin and had tried a
natural soap. But to her disappointment,
she found one of the ingredients was
palm oil, the production of which has
been reported widely as being linked
to deforestation and the destruction of
animal habitats.
“I thought, ‘I just can’t support this.’ ”
She already had a love for soaps,
hoarding beautiful bars her aunty gifted
her and making her own as a teenager.
So, she toyed with the idea of making
cold-process soap.
“Because I came away from chemo
with a brain injury, I wasn’t confident
about doing it,” Kirstin says. “A local lady
showed me and after that I was away.
And I thought, ‘Right, if I am making
this it is going to be no additives, no
chemicals and no synthetics.’ Our body
does not need this kind of stuff.”
Which is how she ended up on the
bathroom floor on a Saturday afternoon.
“I needed to be clear about what
I had in my own cupboards. I took
everything out and I googled all the
ingredients I didn’t know and researched
them. I was shocked. I was like, ‘Why is
all this stuff in soap, lotions and balms?’ ”
And that was the start of Bare Naked
Soap in Wanaka. It became a full-time
business for her when her brain injury
made it difficult for her to continue her
work in aviation maintenance.
“My friend said, ‘Right you need do
something that gets you out of bed
every day. You cannot stay at home
hiding from the world.’ And I thought,
well, maybe I should get into making
more soap,” says Kirstin.
Pushing through nerves and fears
she would not be able to support
herself, she began creating natural
soaps concocted only with the
hand of nature. Clays, spices, herbs,
seaweed, superfoods, coffee and
essential oils are just some of the
things she uses to make her colourful
soaps with swirls and stripes. They
are quite delicious looking, to the
point they have disappointed hungry
children at markets.
“They go, ‘Look mum, cake!’ ”
she laughs. “It is quite funny watching
their faces light up at how ‘big’ the
cakes are. The poor things, they get
so disappointed when they can’t
eat it.”
With her wicked sense of humour,
she has even invented a soap made
from Speight’s beer.
The Bloke Soap Beer & Mud was
born when Kirstin was concerned
about the soap her housemate was
using because of the ingredients in it.
“He’s your typical southern man.
Beer-drinking, number-one-haircut
truck driver. I offered him some of
my natural soap and he looks at it
and says, ‘Put some beer in it and I
might consider it.’ ”
Challenged accepted, says Kirstin
with a laugh.
She found some beer in the back
of the fridge and got to work. Before
long she was handing him the first
piece of Bloke Soap.
“He just kept using it. He’s realised
skin is your biggest organ and you
have to look after it,” she says.
Kirstin’s path to finding her passion
has not been an easy one, but
she wouldn’t want the story to be
written any differently.
“I think my life is better now, even
with the difficulties from treatment.
To do something that I love every
day is just so amazing.”