This is a story about Filio, the creator of FISIKA, and co-founder Maria, unveiling the true meaning of FISIKA brand. How it all started! Written by Yota Celenti, customer and friend of FISIKA, with whom we collaborated for the faithful telling of this story. Please, finish up your tea, while enjoying the final Part3!
Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
I've got you under my skin ♪♫♪♪
Filio's skin issues, at last, had resolved thanks to all those skin ''marmalades' she had been making in her kitchen. She realized it was great fun getting her hands dirty, so she continued making soaps and creams and massage oils. She soon became popular for her creations and family and friends began asking for her goodies. Every time she went to a neighbour’s or her yoga class she got similar reactions. ‘‘What did you wash your hair with? It smells so lovely!’’, ‘‘I’d love to have your skin!’’, ‘‘Oh that smells nice, I want to try’’. All the positive feedback motivated Filio to keep going.
She was having the time of her life experimenting with ways to create her creams and lotions or coming up with any imaginable combination for the ingredients. She kept working. She felt like an explorer, visiting libraries, looking at beautifully hand-drawn pictures of herbs and plants in old books, reading about their benefits for the human body. She expanded her research, reading numerous scientific papers online. The more she learnt, the more engrossed she felt! She enjoyed once again going on her long-forgotten investigative expeditions in nature, picking up flowers and feeding her mind on colours and aromas!
Filio and her daughter Maria looking in the forest for wild herbs.
Every time she created a new cream, Filio would invite her sister, her daughter and the rest of the family to the kitchen, to try on and test all of her proud creations. From rather hesitant guinea pigs, they soon became great supporters of her new endeavours. They started using only the creams Filio was making, getting seriously inspired by her passion, and that led them to start changing also their life habits and way of thinking. The whole family took an interest in minimalism and gardening and started seeking the unique qualities of every local herb, plant or spice. Seeing that these new practices created no waste, they started to appreciate the benefits of recycling. Slowly but surely they all started paying attention to how things were produced, soon going in favour of organic. It was a whole new mindset for them but the seed had been planted long ago and Filio knew that. She remembered her grandmother meticulously washing the plastic bags she got from the grocer’s, keeping them to re-use again and again. Filio had then filed that simple habit with the rest of the unexplainable and extraordinary things Paraskevi did. But she saw now: her grandma worked with the earth. She knew how sensitive it is, this balance between our own existence and the respect we show to nature. Caring for everything living and natural, nurturing it, protecting it: that meant caring for her family too. Paraskevi, without putting it into words, lived by this rule.
Family members in the fields, appreciating nature.
One day, as Filio was passing by the bathroom door, she saw Maria standing still… quite a feat for her lively daughter. Unsettled, Filio, checked discreetly if everything was alright. Maria couldn’t see her though: she was standing there, eyes closed, inhaling deeply. Filio almost laughed... that reminded her of something! For an instant, she travelled back in time. She saw herself, a little girl, the first effect on her senses of her grandma’s bath.
In the next years, Maria would join the adventures of her mother, in the kitchen. She may not have been a witch herself but she had inherited her grandma's talent in cooking, which made her super creative with the recipes. Soon enough an idea was born: what if they shared their wonderful skincare regimen, their ''potions'' and the solutions they offered with more people? Sure it started as something for their own skin issues but there could be others who might need it as much as Filio did originally. What if this family affair had a name of its own and wasn’t confined to their household walls anymore? What if more people could be included, benefit and participate as it was already happening with their family and friends? And what if all this could be combined with making a living from the lifestyle they had chosen? Was it possible? Of course, it was. Naturally. Fisikά. FISIKA was born.
