The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

You were a world-class hairdresser from Austria. You settled in Minneapolis and became a world-class party animal. You got deathly ill, and decided to heal not only yourself but the world. You sold Aveda for $300 million. Meet your Rakish readers, HORST.

Horst Rechelbacher is filthy rich. He’s also a pure soul, spending as much as seven hours a day in serious meditation and yogic practice. The 61-year-old stylist, photographer, entrepreneur, and activist has long made his home in the Twin Cities.

Horst arrived in Minneapolis when he was still a young man with a rich Austrian accent. Having become a world-class hairdresser at the tender age of 14, he had already toured most of the world before he was an adult. In 1965, he was passing through the area when he was involved in a nearly fatal automobile accident. He spent several months in the hospital, and by the time he got out, he was saddled with what seemed like a lifetime of medical bills. He decided to set up his own hair salon here, and the rest is history.

But what a history! Through the 60s and 70s, he maintained his platinum reputation as a stylist, while experimenting with his own cosmetics and hair-care supplies. At the same time, he’d become interested in Eastern philosophy and religion. It was a fast-paced, jet-setting lifestyle. Ultimately, in the mid-70s, it all caught up to him and he had a physical breakdown he describes as being “completely zapped.” His mother, an Austrian apothecary, came to Minnesota and helped nurse her son back to health. At about this time, a light went on. He saw with clarity new connections between his spiritual interests, his business ventures, and his personal history. He suddenly became interested in his mother’s traditional herbal infusions and preparations, and sensed a connection to some of the Eastern philosophies he’d been exposed to in India, Nepal, and Tibet.

Horst began to see that “the human body and the planetary body are totally symbiotic.” He studied and received a degree in Ayurvedic medicine, the traditional Indian approach to healing that uses 175 essential oils prepared from plants and flowers. He started meditating on a regular basis. He began to sense that his industry was ripe for a revolution—and he was right. In 1978, he launched Aveda—a Sanskrit word meaning “all knowledge”—to engender his new principles about personal and global renewal, while trying to eliminate the use of toxins and petrochemicals in personal care products.

In 1997, he sold Aveda to Estee Lauder for $300 million. Frustrated by the constant pressure of running a business that had outgrown him, he decided to focus on the things that mattered most to him: meditation and activism. And yet, before long he’d had another idea for a new enterprise: Intelligent Nutrients, a progressive food and supplement retailer. It seems that no matter how retired or wealthy the man becomes, he grows restless to be involved with either a noble cause, a global business, or (ideally) both.

In October, Horst launched a new personal adventure: an art gallery in Northeast Minneapolis, just down the road from the Aveda Institute. Horst Galleries will feature Eastern and emerging artists, and profits from the gallery will benefit charitable causes like preserving traditional medicine and promoting awareness about cancer. His first show featured the work of Romio Shristha, a Tibetan who paints thankgas. These are beautiful, highly detailed, traditional medical illustrations. It was the perfect debut for Horst, combining his love of fine art, his personal interest in Eastern spirituality, and his professional involvement with the traditional, indigenous medicine of Asia.

We met with Horst while the paint was still drying on his new office walls, and Shristha’s show was being hung. Horst is a centered man, he laughs easily and uproariously, and he is genuine about his passions. Like anyone who has cashed out the way he’s cashed out, he knows what he likes, and has no problem demanding it from those around him.The Rake: How would you describe your work today?

Horst: I am a disciple of herbs and plants. I am very interested in my lifetime that I do everything possible to help preserve endangered species of plants which have been used in traditional medicines around the world. You know, last year our world lost 35,000 species of plants. And the reason why is because we are cutting virgin forests around the world. Biologists guess that approximately 95 percent of species that live within the biological system of a virgin forest die when you clear-cut.

The Rake: How do your businesses—Aveda and Intelligent Nutrients—support your goals?

Horst: We want to contribute to greening the planet. And to avoid using petrochemical chemistry, which is not sustainable. I obviously feel we can do this through education. I am not a teacher, by the way. I prefer to be called a student.

We probably have 20 to 30 years of oil left in the planet, to get out. To me, the human body and the planetary body are totally symbiotic. We’re made from the same elements. We are made from soil—bone, tissue, is soil. We’re made from water—we are 75 percent water, so the world’s matrix is our matrix. We are also solar-powered—we need light. And we’re respiratory, we are air. So we are the same elements, many of which are—surprise!—becoming endangered. It’s only in the last 100 years that we got ourselves into this situation. Can you imagine?

The Rake: You’ve been in the business of creating demand for socially responsible products. A cynic would say you just know how to make a buck, due to the marketing of “green” products and services.

Horst: It’s not just the entrepreneurial spirit. It’s knowing about what’s right. If you know about it, and you don’t do it—because I am Catholic, I have guilt feelings. That has a lot to do with it. Guilt. And why not do something that is nurturing?

The Rake: You view money as a form of power. You had a lot of it—as a successful business owner, stylist, and photographer. You had the money, in other words, to indulge your curiosities.

Horst: It wasn’t until I cashed in what I call my playing field for the moment, that I became independent. Before, I wasn’t very independent, because I always reinvested into the company, and took very little for myself. Quite amazingly, unlike some other people do. Because I lived for the business, and I also lived for my family and the people I am involved with. Once I sold Aveda, things changed for me. My objectives changed, my anger decreased because my pressure decreased, of performing and providing every day. There is enormous pressure on leadership in a corporation, it’s a seven-days-a-week phenomenon. It’s not easy. I have my own personal techniques that I use to refuel the battery. I renew myself by looking within, and evaluating myself. I like the healing arts. Judge me not. For me, it’s the right thing to do. I’m doing what I’m doing because I just feel good about it right now. Am I going to be doing it ten years from now? I don’t know, it’s not the issue. I don’t even think ahead anymore. I thank every day to be alive. [Laughs.] I’ll be 61 in a month! Perspective changes as one ages.

The Rake: To grow or even sustain Aveda, you were going to have to go public, right?

Horst: Exactly. This is why I want a new design for Intelligent Nutrients. Small is beautiful. Because you don’t need to go public when you’re in a cooperative with the people you work with and with the community. Ben and Jerry did it in an interesting way, but then they copped out on it. There’s usually an economic reason, where the people who started a company want to cash out, because their family puts pressure on them, they get divorced, there are settlements where you need cash. That’s often why people go public. Interesting how businesses evolve into living organizations which take on personalities.

The Rake: Why did you stay here in the Twin Cities, when you could have lived anywhere in the world?

Horst: My family is here. I don’t have anybody in Austria. My parents are both gone, and they were both orphans, so I literally don’t have family in Austria. My older brother came here, my other brother died. I’m seriously think of going back to Europe, to live there at least half the time. For a time I was thinking of moving to Asia, but Asia is too crazy for me. They don’t like foreigners, they really don’t.

The Rake: Where in Europe do you think you might live?

Horst: Ireland. I’m looking at building a studio there, so I can paint there. I want to learn how to be a painter. I’m trying different things, I’m still looking, I’m an explorer. Painting is just play, basically. I want to spend more time doing that because I enjoy that. And more time meditating. Because when I paint, I can meditate.

The Rake: How much do you meditate? Two hours a day?

Horst: More than that. It depends, I vary. There are periods when I mediate seven hours a day. I go through streaks. It all depends. When I feel like I’ve run empty, then I need to meditate.

The Rake: Do you work with a teacher?

Horst: My teacher left his body. I don’t need a meditation teacher. In fact, I think meditation is something you teach yourself. Somebody can give you suggestions, but the practice becomes the teacher. The practice is the teacher. It takes breath science, and it takes surrendering. You go deep, where you are in the true self. And then it works. You can’t teach that, you have to practice it. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world. I haven’t found any substitute. If I don’t meditate, then I have to have a glass of wine! [Laughs.]

The Rake: Any activity can become a yoga, a meditative practice, right? Can business be a yoga?

Horst: Business is a meditation in action. It’s a form of worship, if you look at it from the right point of view. If you look at yourself selflessly. When that’s the intent, the goal, the mission, then it is a meditation. If it’s not, it’s still a learning process. What is meditation? Some people say meditation is absence of mind. Your mind is not being attended to. Pure meditation is absence of mind, there is no interference. There is only one frequency. It’s a low frequency. You ground yourself, because it’s energy. Pure consciousness is pure energy. It needs to be grounded. I ground myself by surrendering, and then it sucks me into it, almost like a little vacuum. That is bliss. I call it brain surfing, it’s just the most amazing thing.

The Rake: Do you still consider yourself a Catholic?

Horst: Religion is very unnecessary for me. In fact, religion is an obstacle. It took me a while to figure that out. My mentor, because he was an Indian, people would say, “Are you Hindu?” And he’d say, “No, I’m an Undo!” People say, “Are you a Buddhist?” and I say, “No, I’m a nudist!” [Laughs.] I just want to be everything, why choose one thing in this day and age? It’s just not practical for me, when I see all the people fighting over belief. I just say I am a Catholic because that’s what I am—that’s the way I was born. I have no need to change, I just need to expand my horizon. Catholic teaching is as good as any other teaching, there’s nothing wrong with it. It talks about the male and female energy, which is a reality. It talks about universal consciousness, which is a reality. I just expand on that.

The Rake: How do you distinguish this type of belief from more hollow forms of “new age” spirituality?

Horst: The discipline. Discipline is commitment to the worship, to practice, service, and making a contribution.

The Rake: What is beauty, and what role does it play in healing the planet?

Horst: I firmly believe today that one of the greatest teachers is the body itself. We are composed of two things: Chemistry and energy. Energy is information. Chemistry is matter, substance. This is what we are. Water is a chemical. Air is a chemical. So we are chemicals. What we have now discovered is that, if you and I are content in the moment, in the here, in the present, the body makes endorphins. They get us up and going and make us feel great. It’s almost like endorphins bring spirit to life. It lights up the energy in the cells, it awakens us, it renews us in the moment, instantly. It’s like an awakening, an endorphin rush. We can’t buy endorphins. We can synthesize them, this is what drug companies have been doing for years. There are products on the market that try to mimic this. But you don’t need to buy them, you can make them. But you have to earn it, through action.

Endorphins also build new peptides, peptides are immune-system building blocks. Now if we are in a state of dis-ease, it’s the result of another kind of action. Because I am more interested in me than you, instead of being one with you, I say I don’t care about your being one with me. I separate myself from you. Interesting enough, I don’t make endorphins when I do that. Because the body knows. There’s something in the body that knows the difference.

Beauty is odd. Love is endorphins. Love triggers endorphins. Endorphins are related to the self, because the self is love. I happen to believe personally that the self is pure love, that’s all self is. Pure, radiant, conscious energy. By nature we are loving beings.

Modern society, the material world makes the distinction between “good and bad,” “right and wrong.” But what it really is, on the psychological-physical plane, is pain and bliss. Beauty is an interpretation of truth. Yours is different than mine.

The Rake: Was there beauty in 9/11?

Horst: It’s in the eye of the beholder. Who is right? On which side is God? They think God is on their side. The Buddhists don’t take sides. Why are people willing to die for that? What causes such a deep frustration, what causes the internal terror that the pain is so strong that you’re literally willing to die for it?

The Rake: Were the terrorists selfless?

Horst: In that moment, they are totally selfless, there is no doubt about it. People blow themselves up for a cause, it’s no different than a man who sees a train coming, sees a child, and jumps to save the child, and gets killed by doing that. Fine line. I don’t want to judge that. It’s only how I feel and how I act, what I do.

Evil is a human invention. Good and bad is a human invention. Someone convinced someone, somewhere, that God created man in His image. It’s also true that humans created God in their way. It all works, as long as no one gets hurt.The Rake: Where in Austria did you grow up?

Horst: Klagenfurt is on a big, scenic lake. It’s surrounded by mountains. It’s a pretty big town, about 65,000 people. It’s a tourist place, big huge scenic lake, hotels.

My father was a soldier in the German army, he was with the military police. So they imprisoned the military police after the war, they had to go to prison camp. It was a weird thing. We were listening to the radio every night, and they would announce the prisoners who had been released from the camp. They had to get everybody’s code and number and clearances, see if there were any records of war crimes, it was very thorough. There were American prison camps, British prison camps, and Russian camps. And the worst ones were the Russian camps, my father was in a Russian camp. I don’t think he wanted to talk about it. It drove him to drink. After the war, he would disappear for days.

My father was a shoemaker. He was a real craftsperson. He measured your foot, then he carved, out of wood, your foot, and then he made the shoe. Then, because of the war, he made a lot of orthopedic shoes—people would have one leg shorter, so he made shoes for them. I used to watch him working in his studio. He made ski boots, shoes for boxers, soccer players. He had a very rich clientele.

The Rake: Your mother was a naturalist and an herbalist, right?

Horst: And the head of the family. My mother worked in an apothecary, making remedies in the back room, tonics, extracts, tinctures, teas—apothecaries. But she also had a private kitchen practice. Everyday, there were ten or fifteen people just hanging out in our kitchen. I learned from my mother the strength of will power, because she was always there, and she was always giving. She always gave everything away, she never had anything. She was quite yogic, in fact.

The Rake: How did you get interested in hair styling?

Horst: We lived right in the center of town. We lived on the first floor, directly across the street was a hairdressing salon. At street level was a men’s shop, upstairs was a women’s shop. And I always looked into the shop. My grades in school were terrible. Math, English, German, Shorthand—all those things, I couldn’t think. I had some form of dyslexia, I think. The shop was doing competition hairdressing, and I looked in there, and they practiced evenings, and I was watching them. The street was very narrow—you know, European streets where you can look from window to window. So I was watching, and then in school, the teachers said, “You know, you are now 12 years old, you’re not good at school. Think about what you want to be apprenticed in.” So you take a trade. In Austria and Germany, you go to vocational school once a week, and the rest of the week you work in a shop as an apprentice. You learn your trade.

The Rake: Before long you were entering competitions. What was that like?

Horst: In those days, we started at six in the morning. Apprentices had to be at the shop first, because they had to start the fire, there was no central heating, it was all wood-burning ovens. By the time the clients came, it would be seven. The men came for a shave, the women came for comb-outs before they went to work. Everybody had to be to work at eight o’clock, so they were in the shops at seven. So they had to be warm, clean, and organized. And that’s the apprentice’s job. I was very lucky, because I worked in a small shop.

I didn’t want to be just average. Besides, I just loved it. I loved competing, I loved creating beautiful things. At 14, I was really into it, and I was winning. I was very competitive. I worked seven days a week then. I was different than most kids, because they went to the beach, I didn’t. Monday was my day off, I went to practice competition hair dressing. Thursday night, competition hair dressing. When I was in competition, I practiced almost every night before the competition.

My boss was very competition-minded. Competition was a big thing in those days. There were state championships, regional championships, national championships, and international championships. There was actually a world championship in hairdressing. There still is. I started my apprenticeship in 1956, I finished in 1958, in 1959 I went to Italy. I was already three years junior champion! I went to Italy, then to Germany, England, and France. Then, because I was such a winner, manufacturers started hiring me as a stylist, working on photo shoots for their advertising. Through that, I got into editorial styling, working in magazines. I worked all over Europe—we didn’t fly back then, we drove. But then I also worked in salons, because the magazine jobs were not there all the time. By the time I was 20 years old, I was a hot-dog hairdresser. I had all these trophies—I won the Grand Prix of France, of Austria; I won the Grand Prix-Golden Ring of Germany, I won the Grand Prix of Belgium, and Holland. I won the Golden Crown of the European Championship.

The Rake: How did you make the transition from hair styling to manufacturing your own styling products and cosmetics?

Horst: There is no better training to be a product tester for a company. When I was a competition hair stylist, I worked for the labs, and the chemists always gave me their products for testing. I told them what worked, what I didn’t like. I learned product development. I learned photo styling. Then I learned photography, because when I had to do it here, I couldn’t pay these guys. So I picked up my own camera and copied what they were doing. So to do Aveda for me was a piece of cake, I loved it, it was just the things I always did.

I made my first hairspray when I first came here in ’65, called simply “Horst” hairspray. Because everybody had shitty hairspray. The Europeans had a very special hairspray, so I went to Europe, to a chemist who I knew. And I said, “I’m in America, can you give me the formula?” And he said, “No.” And so we made a deal underneath the table! [Laughs uproariously.] I had a great formula, one of the best hairsprays in Europe. It was basically Loreal hairspray. It was fantastic. It worked the best, but it was not the healthiest. In fact, there was a lot of polyvinyl chloride shit in there, I’m surprised I’m still alive. A lot of my friends are dead, all died of lung cancer—1950s, 60s hairsprays killed a lot of people, customers and stylists. Nobody knew. Now we know, one molecule of polyvinyl chloride—PVC—can cause cancer.

The Rake: Why did you change the name to Aveda in 1978?

Horst: Hairdressers did not want to sell my stuff. My New York friends, they said, “This is a great idea, would you make it for me?” They didn’t want to sell Horst stuff. It was a pure ego thing—“A guy from Minneapolis? No way!”

The Rake: You started the Aveda Institute, to educate young stylists. Do you ever visit anymore?

Horst: I go there and teach, I talk to the kids, I give a whole morning demonstration, I do makeup. I love that. I get paid for it—I’m still being paid by Estee Lauder a good chunk of money, so it’s my job. I have a contract with them for many years, a non-compete. I am totally connected to the kids, I relate to the kids. I know how important it is to have a good attitude, how important not to take the client too personally, but to understand that the client is always right. I learned how to listen to the client. I learned behind the chair that every client knows exactly what they want when they get it. When they smell it, taste it, hear it, see it, and feel it. It’s a sensory experience. And I just made sure I pleased their senses.

The Rake: You’ve been critical of the marketing of words like “organic” and “natural.” Why?

Horst: The word “organic” is meaningless. It has no meaning in cosmetics. Petrochemicals are organic, they come from the earth. The word “natural” is meaningless. Chemists, when they get the their degrees, it’s organic chemistry.

The Rake: How did you get started with aromatherapy?

Horst: One of my mentors was Jean Valnet, a medical doctor in France. He was a surgeon in the First World War in Indochina, and the monks were using essential oils. He ran out of medicine, penicillin and things like that, so the monks gave him medicines to treat post-wound healing, after surgery, and he saw remarkable healing response. After the war he went to France, and he got together with a biochemist. They analyzed essential oils. They found that essential oils had a therapeutic effect. Aromatherapy is a medical term in France. At apothecaries in France, it says “Homeopathie, Aromatherapy, and Phytotherapie.” “Aroma” means essential oils, “phyto” means plant—usually dry or other extractions, and “homeopathie” is in dilution.
Jean Valnet taught me aromatherapy, essential oils used medicinally. But the stuff he did was all single essential oils. Some of the singles smelled very medicinal. I used to give it to people, and they’d say, “That smells like medicine!” I made combinations, because it smelled better. Then I went into Asian history, because Aryurvedic medicine has 175 essential oils in the pharmacoepia, very complex. Why do they work? It’s a satisfaction memory. They’re also very active. There are oils that numb—natural painkillers.

The Rake: How does your new art gallery fit into your life and your vision?

Horst: There is no mistake in art, but I want to see happiness in art. I don’t want to see anger, depression—there’s too much of that. Art needs to contribute to making people feel good, to healing. I call it the healing arts.