Everyone Is Obsessed With K-Beauty, but I’m Obsessed With K-Wellness
What I found in Korea’s biggest beauty and wellness store
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
K-beauty has had its moment — its extended, decade-long moment — and it's not going anywhere. But according to Harper's Bazaar, the next obsession arriving from Seoul isn't a ceramide serum or a glass-skin toner. It's wellness, and it's already here.
On a recent trip to Seoul, a beauty editor walked into Olive Young — Korea's answer to Sephora-meets-GNC, whose name is literally a directive to "all live young" — with a plan to stock up on sheet masks and sunscreen. She left having dropped $400, mostly on wellness products. The store's layout tells you everything: dedicated walls organized by ingredient story, from milk thistle and green tea to vegetable supplements and after-meal digestive aids like teas and jelly sticks. It's intuitive in a way that American supplement aisles, with their walls of fine print and conflicting claims, almost never are.
Protein Bars, Pumpkin Tea, and the Wellness Store America Didn't Know It Needed
The food and beverage section confirms what anyone who's been paying attention already suspects: the protein obsession is global. Olive Young stocks protein chips and low-sugar, clean-ingredient candy-style bars alongside shake packets in flavors like pistachio, cookies and cream, and chocolate hazelnut. The beverage situation runs deep — matcha, kombucha, apple cider vinegar shots, vitamin elixirs in both liquid and powder form. The tea selection alone could convert a skeptic: pumpkin tea for bloating, red bean for water retention, options for every minor inconvenience your body throws at you. Collagen comes in capsules, powder sachets, and mini shots. Olive oil, currently having its wellness-world moment, is available in travel-friendly capsule form. The whole effect is less health-food store, more very chic candy shop that happens to be good for you.
The brand is already planning a standalone concept in Korea called Olive Wellness — "all live wellness," naturally — and has just opened its first two U.S. locations in Los Angeles. Which means you no longer need a Seoul itinerary to find out what everyone who's been to Olive Young already knows: K-wellness is doing what K-beauty did ten years ago, and the Americans who get there first are going to be very smug about it.
Consider this your early warning: K-wellness is the beauty world's next big shift, and it's already on a shelf in L.A. waiting for you.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
