Laure Chicoine, top left, at Nirvana. Photo by Felipe Buitrago.
A small business in Los Gatos is helping to lead the green charge in Silicon Valley, and it isn’t the type of business you would expect.
Laure Chicoine has perfect makeup, not a shiny blonde lock out of place and she has that effortlessly stylish look. Not the first image that comes to mind when you think of some one who is the model of a green-company owner.
Chicoine owns Nirvana Salon in Los Gatos, the first salon in the Bay Area to receive certification from the Bay Area Green Business Program.
About a year ago Nirvana went through a massive overhaul. “We just gutted and cleaned the whole salon, put in the incandescent lighting, used recycled woods,” Chicoine says. “We still stay on the cutting edge of fashion, but incorporating more of a holistic approach.”
A majority of the ingredients in the products the Salon uses and sells have low toxicity levels, which means the salon can’t offer nail or perm treatments. They also recycle as much as they can, and create very little trash.
Nirvana has been a Los Gatos staple since 1991. “We opened up the salon to create a more holistic approach to hair and beauty so we focus on the use of aroma therapy in every service and we tried to minimize the chemicals we used in the salon,” Chicoine says. “We used mostly plant-based products at the time, and we also did a lot of classes on meditation and pilates and energy work. That was back in the early ’90s and it was a nice little vibe; we had a great clientele and over the years we’ve grown more from that small client base to a large client base.”
In 2000 Nirvana became an Aveda Concept Salon, which means that they sell only Aveda products. According to Aveda’s website, the company tries to use “green” ingredients whenever possible which means they are organic, sustainable or renewable. It also does not perform any animal testing.
Nirvana also generally sends all of its hair clippings to a San Francisco nonprofit called A Matter of Trust, which turns the hair into mats that soak up oil spills. (Currently the nonprofit is looking for a new warehouse so the project is on hold.) The salon also collects hard plastic bottle lids and sends them to Aveda, which recycles them into tops for their products.
Chicoine is a master stylist who has been practicing her craft for more than 25 years. Though she does it all, she says she really enjoys working with her clients to give them the best style for their face and for who they are.
“I like that it’s small and intimate it’s got that boutique charm,” she says. “Everybody knows each other and we all get along. There’s no jagged edges in the salon.”
Chicoine likes that Los Gatos is a walkable community, that the town is getting more green, and that they are starting to do more in the downtown like Second Saturdays and Jazz in the Plazz.
“I like being a part of the community, a quaint community where everything is in a small little niche.
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