From The Virtual World To Reality: A Night For Green Beauty Set To Pop Up In Chicago With The Parlor

A Night For Green Beauty is extending its stay for longer than a night or a day.

The green beauty event producer started by Victoria Fantauzzi, co-founder of the brand La Bella Figura, is planning an in-person experience on Nov. 16 to 17 in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. The pop-up follows ANFGB’s reemergence in August after a three-year hiatus with a successful online shopping event.

The 250-square-foot pop-up verges from the au courant Instagram-fueled beauty pop-ups filling feeds. Dubbed The Parlor, the temporary boutique is designed to be a luxurious throwback with attentive customer service and considered shopping. At The Parlor, tea will be served in the afternoon and champagne in the evening.

“We want people to feel like they’re coming to visit a friend,” says Fantauzzi. “They’re going to sit and have tea with us, and it [will] be fully-serviced to teach them anything they want to learn about creating a regimen or green beauty products. We want them to do it in a way that they don’t feel rushed, or [that’s] selling, selling, selling. They can hang out and talk to us, and do it in this really beautiful atmosphere.”

Products are expected to be artfully placed around The Parlor’s space, and not all of them will be on display. Based on conversations with customers, it will be up to The Parlor’s staff to suggest products suiting their needs and budgets. 

“For everyone that comes in, we’re going to take their coats, bringing product to them that they’re interested in, and gift wrapping,” says Fantauzzi. “There’ll be this old-fashion experience of combining service and hospitality.”

The brands that will be available at The Parlor include many ANFGB veterans. Among them are One Love Organics, Florescent, Hynt Beauty, Lina Hanson, Violets Are Blue, Osmia Organics, Kari Gran, Cleo&Coco, Kahina Giving Beauty, Maya Chia, La Bella Figura, Saint Cosmetics and Twelve Beauty.

“We want people to feel like they’re coming to visit a friend. They’re going to sit and have tea with us, and it [will] be fully-serviced to teach them anything they want to learn about creating a regimen or green beauty products.”

Color cosmetics brands Saint Cosmetics and Hynt Beauty are scheduled to host holiday makeup events during The Parlor’s two-day run. Hynt Beauty president Meryl Marshall will be on hand for a makeup session at the pop-up on Nov. 17. 

“We had an overwhelming response to AGNFB’s event night this past August,” says Marshall. “We are especially excited to participate in The Parlor event in Chicago. The like-mindedness of this cleaner brand community is so inspiring. I have thus far learned much from Victoria and Amanda [Florian, ANFGB event coordinator and photographer] from discussions as well as their podcast. We help one another stay focused, motivated and with resources. It is a winning collaboration.”

While Marshall declined to disclose the sales Hynt tallied at August’s virtual shopping event, she describes the customer response to the sale as “overwhelming.” Fantauzzi reports several brands that took part in the event registered sales rivaling their Black Friday figures. For The Parlor,  ANFGB negotiated with participating brands to come up with terms that worked for both them and it.

The partnership goes beyond the pop-up to limited-edition beauty boxes called The Nighttime Self Care Beauty Box and The Going Out Party Box that will sell online to U.S. residents starting Nov. 30. The exact contents of the boxes are being kept under wraps, but La Bella Figura’s $165 Vitamin D+Ergothioneine Deep Serum and products from Hynt Beauty will definitely be featured. The boxes will be priced from $150 to $175 and contain $500 worth of full-sized green beauty merchandise.

Interested shoppers should mark their calendars, though—there will only be 20 of each box available. “We’re only going to sell 40 of them, which is really hard because in the past we’ve sold 200 boxes at a time, but we can’t do that because we can’t ask brands to donate that much product for free,” says Fantauzzi. A previous ANFGB box that Fantauzzi and King partnered with a subscription box service to produce, brought in $75,000. “We donated all that money to different charities. This time we’re not donating to charities, we’re putting it on reserve for A Night For Green Beauty so we can go ahead and do more things in the future. Our brands are amazing because they donated the product to us to do this. So we only asked them to donate 20 units and this way we can be smart and guarantee that we put that [revenue] in our reserve for our next steps,” says Fantauzzi.

Fantauzzi doesn’t have a set revenue goal in mind for The Parlor. Her main priority for the two-day pop-up is for ANFGB to be visible on the growing Chicago brick-and-mortar scene.

“Chicago has deep roots in customer-service culture. This is where the principles of Harry Gordon Selfridge were born and where Marshall Fields created a legacy by giving customers what they want,” says Fantauzzi. “We aren’t into trends. We’re into authenticity. Chicago has a style and an eye that combines the soul of a preservationist and that of an innovator.”