The Family Story Behind Dr. Alkaitis Organics | 30 Years of Raw Skincare

I Was There the Day It Happened

A family story of rebellion, integrity, 
and the birth of something entirely new

By: Trish Alkaitis
Photography: The Alkaitis Family

The Beginning of a Vision

I was there the day it happened. The three of us sat around the yellow lacquered modern dining table in the kitchen, surrounded by bunches of fresh carrots that I had just pulled from the massive vegetable garden. The kitchen was filled with heat and action, chopping, steaming, and swirling with the fragrant, spicy aromas typical of my dad’s famous Friday Night dinners, a steadfast tradition kept until the day he took a deep bow from planet Earth. On this particular evening, my dad had the grand epiphany to create a skincare line, but only if he could manage to break all the rules set forth by the then-conventional beauty industry. A scientific trailblazer and bad-boy genius, he was struck with an idea that perfectly teased his rebellious nature.

“It was all just so Dutch. A perfect, serene village life.”

It was a warm summer evening, the sun softened by the day’s end, and a cozy gray overcast blanketed the sky. I remember those nights well. Darkness never truly comes on that side of the hemisphere in the summer months. The light lingers, simply dimmed, and the sky appears so low that you could reach up, grab a cloud, and stuff it in your bag with nonchalant ease.

Their Farm Was Incredible

The Netherlands: A Symphony of Scents and Colors

The Netherlands has a very specific smell that settles my soul. Damp stacks of freshly cut cocksfoot grass, bundled to dry into hay, scatter across the flat spans of endless farmland. Tangy manure hangs low everywhere, and today it mingles with the top notes of my mother’s two hundred and fifty heritage rose bushes and wild French lavender garden.

I was happy to be back in my parents’ home. I had come from Los Angeles to visit and was so intrigued and excited by my parents’ new life in Drenthe, a quiet, elegant province in the northeast of the Netherlands. They had been working hard on their land for a couple of years now, and it was all finally coming to fruition.

Their farm was incredible. Down by the little canal in front of their house, the gate was lined with all different kinds of untamed berry bushes. Because they are so invasive, you must give them lots of space to seize the land with all their stained, thorny, tart sweetness: raspberries, blackberries, red currants, and my absolute favorite, gooseberries.

To the left of the house, the gardeners had planted a small orchard of heirloom fruit varieties: apples, plums, pears, and cherries. Just beyond the orchard were immense raised beds filled with verdant vegetables and green herbs, bursting wide open, kissed by the warm summer sun and bees.

“The land was commanding, poetic, gentle, wild, intense, 
and interesting, just like my parents.”

Between the two of them and their full-time gardeners, they probably spent a good 70% of their time outside, tilling, tending, nurturing, and shaping their land into a labyrinth of nature’s most glorious expressions. Every languid path offered a delight, a pause, an emotional experience timed and in sync with the seasons and the artistry of their vision of the ultimate garden. It was simply a work of art.

It was also filled with art. Real art. 

Beautiful Japanese stone animal sculptures and kinetic wind sculptures from the Art & Design Museum in Amsterdam would bring smiles and surprise to the most unassuming barn-door corners, or be found tucked into wildflower gardens teeming with butterflies, frogs, and dragonflies.

They Were the Painters, the Conductors. Nature Was the Medium.

From the back of their house onward was a meandering meditation path, and there the topography took a deep departure from the formal flower gardens and perfectly maintained vegetable beds.

Six-foot-tall wild grasses, cattails, and reeds lined the hidden path, gently swaying and bowing in a curtsy as they beckoned you forward through the tunnel of solitude. Once on the other side, the vista broke wide open into a vast emerald-green meadow that stretched all the way down to where the herd of cows stood gossiping by the fence.

It Was Sheer Beauty

The duck pond island took center stage. On the island, beneath a massive weeping willow tree, was a little bench for two. There, you would sit under a canopy of non-stop sing-song symphony. I had come to believe that every bird in the province lived in that tree.

Chimes echoed in the wind, the dog barked, ducks quacked, cows mooed, and my dad banged on as many pots as possible to produce the most delectable meal he could physically coax from the stainless steel pans, while jazz blasted throughout the house, ricocheting back and forth in rhythm between the two barns outside.

Growing up, every single Friday night was a party in our house. A gourmet organic foodie extravaganza that lasted for hours on end. Old-school, European style. Slow and lingering. Family. Friends. Food. Music. Wine. Repeat. Even if it was only for two.

Our Lives Were Lived Right There, Around That Table and Those Chairs.

Our kitchen table was always the heart of our home. The center. The place that nourished our minds, bodies, and souls. It held the loud and hard conversations, the roaring laughter, the music, the many tears, the agreements, disagreements, antics, dancing, and toasts to life. All our lives were lived right there around that table and those chairs.

It took some time, but at some point I started to recognize my parents’ little pattern, and invariably, every few months or every couple of years, somewhere between the salad and dessert, our lives would be forever changed.

Spontaneous Epiphanies Made Over a Full Plate, Bursting Bellies, and a Bottle or Two of  the Very Best of the Best Organic Wine. 

Decisions that would change the trajectory of each of our lives forever were made on the innocent throw of I Ching coins or a silent dream that dared to be spoken aloud on that particular evening, and voilà, under the spell of whatever moon phase we were in that night, our fate would be sealed and we would be packing in the morning.

“They simply couldn’t resist the temptation of adventure.”

I was the daughter of a couple of highly eccentric, intellectual, hip, old-school beatniks: a genius mad scientist and an incredible textile artist whose passions and desires moved mountains to chase whatever tugged at their hearts at that particular moment. Not an easy ride for a kid who just wanted to be normal. For life to be predictable. Slightly boring. To have the same house, school, and friends for longer than a year. That is what I aspired to... but I digress. That is altogether another story. 

So, in answer, yes, this is how they came to be right here, right now. All the way from the famous 16 Thornton Towers in Venice Beach, California, the beautiful Art Deco apartment building with a spiral staircase that was once rumored to have been owned by the famous dancer Isadora Duncan... and here they were, after just a few years, having navigated from the States to Bergen aan Zee and eventually to the Grande Dame, Drenthe.

At long last, my mom had her roots back. My dad was happily game to retreat from his scientific research position in a big corporate oil company in America that had been, in two words, soul-crushing.

His career was not for the fainthearted. In the end, it battered him, because he finally understood that every single incredible contribution made by the science team he led, the team that researched, developed, and discovered, all for the betterment of humanity, never came to see the light of day.

I will let you, dear reader, dive in between those weighty lines. For this alone is what reshaped him. It is the why, the how, the passion, the drive, and the endless commitment behind his absolute, unwavering, unfaltering determination to have 100% integrity in what came next.

He would absolutely never again have to compromise. Ever.

A New Chapter

“Our kitchen table was always the heart of our home. The center. The place that nourished our minds, bodies, and souls.”

My dad absolutely loved to cook. He was, in my opinion, a master chef. He approached each meal with scientific precision coupled with the passion of a love-struck poet. If I had to compare him to an artist, it would be Salvador Dalí.

He loved Dalí. Once, I gave him a cookbook by Dalí, and the recipes were just insane. My father read that cookbook as if he were reading the tea leaves of the greatest man on earth, peeking into his heart, his head, his psyche, all through his taste buds. He laughed great, big, jolly laughs at the absurdity of some of the recipes, his crystal-blue eyes sparkling even brighter with mischief.

One of my strongest memories from every move, every new house, was how the very first thing my parents would unpack and rearrange was their spice “cabinet.” It was never a cabinet at all, but a walk-in broom closet transformed into a miniature apothecary, lined with shelves holding their collection of rare spices, dried herbs, and roots gathered from one far-off country to another.

The fridge, too, was a world tour, bursting with condiments that ranged from fish sauces and Vietnamese barbecue marinades to salsas that spanned from mildly spicy to so hot your head might pop off. The second thing they always did was unpack all of the books. We always had an abundance of cherished books that crossed many oceans with us. They grounded us. Connected us. They were like old friends.

The Lightbulb Moment

And so it was a Friday Night, and he prepared one of his extraordinary farm-to-table meals with delectable produce straight from our garden.

Suddenly, my mother picked up a little bottle of face cream that she had bought that day from the health food store in their town of Assen. There she was, reading the ingredient label, and there it was, that one little pesky preservative. “Saulius, can you tell me what this ingredient is?”

He grabbed the bottle, furrowed his eyebrows, and carefully studied the ingredient list, quietly at first, then simply pronounced, “Well, I wouldn’t put that on my skin.” His eyes paused on methylparaben before he went back to scrutinizing the label again, trying to make sense of a formula that didn’t make sense to him.

"Right then and there, as if we could actually see the flash of the light bulb moment - we watched, in real time, the idea drop from the heavens into his higher mind. That was the day Dr. Alkaitis Organics was born.”

A Seed Was Planted

Well, kind of...

For the next three months, this man was totally possessed. As a man, chemist, and highly regarded scientist with so many incredible achievements, it had simply never dawned on him to read what was in our personal skincare products. I mean, for years we grew up with a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s, an amazing brown conditioner from the health food store, and water. My mother was the first one to make us oatmeal masks, hand-blended with lavender, and sell them to friends when I was five years old. We were what you might call low-maintenance.

But now he was like a house on fire. He was reading absolutely everything he could get his hands on, from our personal care products, shampoos, and conditioners to the laundry soap and dish soap. Then, about three months later, the day arrived when he decided he should come to my room to inspect my products. Here, I gave him a mini heart attack.

I was like Miss Sephora. In complete retaliation against a life of organic, healthy macrobiotic school lunches and years of vegan clean living, I did what any normal young girl does and rebelled. I wanted makeup, perfume, hairspray, and gels. I wanted all the stinky and shiny stuff.

My room was filled with glitter and chemicals, the air dense with synthetic fragrance, everything he stood against, gathered in one place.

He stood there, stunned, almost breathless at the sheer volume of what I was willingly pressing into my skin, my body’s largest organ.

That was the day my mother drew the line.

The Beginning of Green Beauty

“Saulius! Enough. If it upsets you this much, then go, leave the house and do something about it. But leave us in peace.” And so this was the day he finally said, “Okay, I will, and I will make sure that whatever I make will absolutely never incur damage to a single living being. I will make you products that you can use for the rest of your life that will never harm you or the planet, that will actually support your outer skin and inner skin! In fact, I will make products with only edible ingredients!”

That was the day he began.

What emerged from that small barn lab would, years later, become what we now call Green Beauty.

Not the end.
The beginning.

In the next chapter, the real journey begins.