Nyakio Grieco

The beauty entrepreneur discusses why she turned pain into purpose with Thirteen Lune and Relevant.

By Lindzi Scharf

Photography by Birdie Thompson

Nyakio Grieco has landed on one “badass woman” list after another in the last year alone. After raising more than $4.5 million in venture capital for her beauty retail company Thirteen Lune since its 2020 launch, Grieco is – no question – in the prime of her career.

However, it’s taken the serial beauty entrepreneur quite some time, a pandemic, and, as she puts it, “a racial reckoning” to arrive here.

"As we were watching all of these murders happen around us, there was a lot of attention to Black-owned businesses and Black-founded businesses and I was on all of those lists," says Grieco, a first-generation American of Kenyan descent who has been in the beauty industry for nearly twenty years. “It was an honor, but it was also built on the precipice of such a hard time. I decided that I was going to take my pain and turn it into purpose.”

In December 2020, she and her co-founder Patrick Herning launched Thirteen Lune with thirteen BIPOC-owned make-up, skin, and hair care companies. “We decided to create Thirteen Lune to be the first of its kind,” Grieco says, seated on a bench in the garden of her Los Angeles home. “Thirteen Lune was meant to be, but it happened by accident. It was the variables of where we were as a world but it was also answering a call.”

Grieco is suddenly busier than ever with television appearances on programs including “Good Morning America” in promotion of her latest venture; however, she admits that it’s taken years for her to feel like she truly belongs.

“There were so few people that looked like me – especially in premium beauty,” she says, reflecting on her earliest years in the business with her first brand Nyakio Beauty, a skincare company she launched in 2002. “There weren't a lot of ‘me’ at the time when I launched my company, so I dealt with a little bit of imposter syndrome.”

The feeling stemmed from a need, she says, “to try to prove” herself. “For the longest time, I felt a responsibility to try to break down an old paradigm,” Grieco says. “I've since learned not to think that I'm here to break down an old paradigm and that I'm just honored to help be a part of creating a new one. And the old paradigm is going down swinging. Let's be clear.”

In addition to Thirteen Lune, Grieco recently launched “Relevant: Your Skin Seen,” a new beauty brand whose first product "One & Done Everyday Cream with SPF 40" is for every skin tone, age, and background. The company and its hero product were introduced to tastemakers during a dinner party at friend and investor Gwyneth Paltrow’s Los Angeles home.

After two decades spent paying dues, Grieco says that she and her husband David, a figurative artist and sculptor, are both finally hitting their stride professionally. “We've always been resilient and no matter how hard and how many fall-down moments we've had as artists and entrepreneurs, we encourage each other to get back up and continue to pursue [our passions],” she says. “David is 51; I just turned 49, and finally everything feels like it’s balancing out for both of us individually as well as as a couple. It’s been a long road, but we finally get to do what we wanted to be when we grow up.”

A HAPPY CHILDHOOD

Grieco moved from New Jersey to Norman, Oklahoma at the age of eight when her father relocated for a professor position at The University of Oklahoma, where he started the school’s African Studies Program.

“I spent pre-school through first grade in New Jersey and loved it so much,” she says. “I remember being afraid to move to Oklahoma and getting there [and being surprised]. We lived in a college town, so that was lovely because you do have a lot of people coming into a college town. So you experience more diversity. People are always like, 'Oklahoma?!' I don't think they understand that it can be an incredible place to grow up—especially if you’re in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, or Norman, where the college town is.”

Grieco’s mother, currently Dean of Resources for Learning at Harper College in Illinois, was also an educator. “I had a happy childhood,” Grieco reflects. “Once we were able to leave the east coast, we could have a house and a yard. I went to public school my whole life and that also informed [who I am today]. Education has always been a huge part of my life and my upbringing.”

As a child, Grieco took a life-altering trip to East Africa. “Both of my parents are from Kenya,” she explains. “Much of my early childhood was hearing stories about their life and where they grew up. At eight, I finally got the privilege of going there to see it myself. Kenya is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s about the people, the kindness, the joy—regardless of how hard times are. It’s diverse too.”

During the trip, she met her grandmother, also named Nyakio, for the first time. “That’s where my beauty journey started,” she says, explaining her grandmother, a coffee farmer, taught her how to make an organic coffee scrub from scratch while her grandfather, a medicine man, taught her about the power of cold-pressed natural oils.

Grieco looked forward to her family trips to Kenya each summer. “Growing up as a kid in the states and not having the privilege of going to your grandparents on the weekends or spending the holidays with them, my time in Kenya has always been almost what made me feel more connected to my upbringing,” she says, explaining that she then became interested in sharing her family’s experiences with friends stateside. “Being a first-generation American defines my love of storytelling and sharing stories – passing on knowledge.”

SOUL SEARCHING

In a similar spirit, Grieco debated studying journalism in college. “I thought I wanted to be in broadcast journalism when I first started school and then my parents weren't necessarily into that idea,” she remembers. “They thought it was so deeply competitive and, they never said this to me, but I'm sure in retrospect… there weren't a lot of broadcast journalists that looked like me, you know, back in that time; so I'm sure they thought that would be a rough go. It was something that I thought I might do in college, but I was encouraged to [pursue something else]... I think it happens for a lot of children of immigrants. The idea of being a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer seems to be the best path forward.”

Even so, Grieco vividly remembers watching morning shows and mimicking what she saw. “I loved the news when I was little,” she says. “I used to read the newspaper and make up the highlights and sit on my fireplace and would make my parents sit on the couch and would deliver the news to them. I’d make my brother be the weatherman. It was my favorite thing to play when I was young.”

However, once Grieco attended the University of Oklahoma she took her parents’ advice and decided to explore other professions and majors. “When I decided not to do broadcast journalism, I thought I would take classes towards a letters major, which is more the classics and reading,” she says. “It's a major that a lot of people do before they go to law school. As I got into it, while I enjoyed the classes, I didn't see myself as a lawyer. It was later in college, at the end of my sophomore, that I decided to be a business [marketing] major. I had a lot of catching up to do and I ultimately went to college for five years because I started in business school so late.”

In hindsight, Grieco realizes how each potential profession has impacted her current reality. “It was the perfect scenario,” she reflects. “I don't think at the time I envisioned being an entrepreneur, but I knew that I loved marketing and communications and business. It was foreshadowing for future endeavors.”

THE BEAUTY OF LOS ANGELES

Upon graduating, Grieco moved to Los Angeles. “I came out here on spring break with my sorority sisters my senior year and fell in love with the sunshine, the beach, and driving down Sunset Blvd,” she says. “I felt connected to California, but I think what I loved the most about Los Angeles was that it is a city of dreamers. You can be whoever or whatever you want to be. The beauty of L.A. is you can say and be and do whatever it is you want to do. A lot of dreamers are attracted to this space and I think collectively it helps us all to see our dreams realized – when we're surrounded by dreamers.”

Grieco began working as an assistant at different types of entertainment industry companies including Creative Artists Agency. “I worked my way through different roles in Hollywood because I wanted to see whether I enjoyed production or representation,” she explains. “The last job I had in the business was working at a management/production company called 3 Arts [Entertainment] and I worked on the representation side. I loved it because I love people. I was able to work with a lot of actresses. While I loved the business, I loved the fashion and beauty aspect [of the entertainment industry] the most. That was a great time for actresses because they were getting beauty deals and those were the conversations I enjoyed being a part of.”

Grieco also liked accompanying talent to their magazine photo shoots. “I would drive the hair and make-up people crazy asking so many questions about their products and what they were doing and how they were using it,” she says with a laugh. “It eventually became abundantly clear that being a full [time] manager to these clients wasn't for me.”

However, Grieco admits that she didn’t truly begin questioning her path until the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘How many of those people weren't satisfied in their jobs when they went to work that day?’” she says. “It sounds a little dark, but I was thinking about all the people that were lost. ‘Did they love their job?’ We were all heartbroken and I thought, ‘How do I want to spend my life? Life is short.’ I was 27 and it’s that time where you’re asking yourself, ‘Who do you want to be? Where do you want to be?’ [Your twenties are] a great time to be reflective and inquisitive because you get to be selfish if you're not married and you don't have kids. The stakes aren’t as high when you don’t have a mortgage to pay.”

NYAKIO BEAUTY

While soul searching, Grieco realized she wanted to tap into her passion for beauty – despite not having any previous experience or connections to the industry. “I wanted to start my own beauty brand and celebrate my family’s beauty secrets and rituals and history,” she says. “I had a lot of products come across my desk because I worked with pretty known actresses and there were never products representing the continent of Africa. There were products that used ingredients from Africa, but it wasn't being celebrated, so I left my job to start Nyakio Beauty.”

Her then-boyfriend, now-husband – David Grieco, who she’s been married to for almost eighteen years after twenty-two years together – encouraged her to take the leap of faith. “He was the one who encouraged me to have the courage to leave my job and start my journey as an entrepreneur,” she says. “I started researching, ‘How do you start a business?’ ‘How do you create a beauty product?’ I had a recipe because my grandmother taught me how to make her coffee scrub when I was a little girl. I knew how to make it at home, but I didn't know how to take it and make it so I could put it on a shelf.”

Grieco contacted the many make-up artists and hairstylists she'd met along the way in search of advice. “I asked a lot of questions,” she says. “That's when I decided, ‘It can't be that hard.’ … I thought, ‘I'll just raise some money. I'll get investors.’ I learned very quickly how hard it would be. I was not independently wealthy.”

She says she didn’t realize that, at the time, less than one percent of venture capital was allocated to businesses founded by women of color. “I'm grateful for my naiveté,” she insists. “I say that all the time. I'm grateful that I didn't know how hard it was for Black women – or women in general – to raise capital. I just believed I could do it, so I did. When people said no, I didn't even really take it that personally. I thought, ‘Well, gosh, they must not realize what a great idea they missed out on.’ I knew right away when I started meeting with private equity and investors in that way that it was not going to happen that way and I didn't have time to waste. I decided to go the friends and family route and people who know people who know people. I was able to raise a little capital just to get the product to market.”

After raising a modest amount, she researched labs that could create her Nyakio Beauty’s hero product—the body scrub. She was turned down by several because her company wasn’t big enough. “The lab that ultimately said yes to me loved the idea of celebrating my grandmother,” she says. “They had huge brands, but they made one product that I loved. They were the manufacturer of Laura Mercier's Crème Brûlée body scrub.”

To this day, Grieco says, “I can't believe they said yes because I was like, ‘I only can afford to make 500 pieces.’ If it wasn't for [Richard Pietz]’s yes – who knows who would have given me a chance?”

THE CHALLENGES

Grieco’s company officially launched in 2002 and she eventually branched into other products. However, growing her brand meant raising additional capital, which has long been an uphill battle. “For Nyakio Beauty, hands down, access to capital was always my greatest challenge,” she says. “Even when I was able to get into partnerships [like with Sundial], Nyakio Beauty was such a tiny brand within their portfolios,” she admits, explaining that the umbrella company’s marketing dollars would ultimately be put elsewhere. Grieco says expansion proved difficult as a result. “Before I was able to get into national retailers, that was challenging,” she says. “Even once the opportunity would come, sometimes I’d have to say no because I knew I couldn’t afford to be there.”

Even so, Grieco weathered one storm after another and continually found a way forward – even when it meant re-launching her brand several times. “When I would fall down or I had to shut it down or I had to move and find new partners, it was having the resilience to start again and to celebrate it every time I started again,” she says. “I joke with my friends like, ‘How many times have you been to a Nyakio Beauty launch?’ I would re-launch the same brand in new ways.”

She credits the support of family and friends with helping her navigate the next steps. "I’ve been surrounded by a lot of encouragement,” she says, sharing that because she had a strong sense of community, she felt emboldened to keep going. “I wasn’t afraid to fall down. I thought, ‘If this doesn’t work, I can always go back and do X, Y, Z.’ Knowing that always allowed me to move forward and not be in fear. I tell people that all the time: ‘Just go for it. The worst that can happen is that it wasn’t meant to be forever. It had a season, but at least you did it and you never have to regret saying, I never had the opportunity to try.’”

Grieco is also quick to acknowledge and name-check the many supporters she’s had along the way. “I've been fortunate to consistently find great mentors,” she says. “Richard Pietz was my first manufacturer; Ron Robinson was my first retailer. When I first started, he was an incredible mentor to me and he still is; Laura Mercier, when I was in the portfolio that she was—that was also full circle that Nyakio Beauty wound up being part of the Laura Mercier portfolio of brands; Lisa Price from Carol’s Daughter—even though I didn’t meet her until later in my career—she was always somebody that I looked to; Sharon Collier —the first portfolio brand company that brought me in to elevate the brand—it was Sharon’s decision [when she was CEO at Gurwitch Products]; Molly Madden – my boss from 3 Arts. She always told me, 'You're going to be a star. You're going to do such big things.' She continues to be a mentor. My mom is my forever mentor. My dad was when he was alive."

Grieco continues to pay her good fortune forward through her work with Girls Inc. Los Angeles, a non-profit mentorship organization for young women.

THE SIDE HUSTLES & HURDLES

But all the emotional support in the world won’t help finance a project, which is why Grieco often had several side hustles to help support her brand. “I would sometimes work two or three jobs just to be able to keep my business going,” Grieco says. “I babysat before I had kids. A lot of times I would take jobs helping to design for other people or I would help other people start their businesses. I designed a candle collection for a store in Dallas; a woman who loved candles and had several homes around the world, I helped her find her signature scent.”

Grieco also briefly worked in real estate. “A friend of ours had a real estate office that he was opening in downtown L.A. and my husband and I would each take shifts working in that office,” she says. “I did whatever I could to be able to pay the bills and still live my dreams at the same time. David would bartend. We did whatever we needed to do in order to get to do what we love to do every day.”

Despite having a clear professional vision, Grieco admits she often struggled with imposter syndrome because, she says, “for a long time, I didn't see a lot of people in the industry [who looked like me].”

She also says the insecurity stemmed from the ups and downs she navigated. “We all have an ego and sometimes it would be really difficult for me to deal with whatever was going to come next because I would sometimes get stuck in the moment,” she says. “The biggest challenge I’ve overcome is learning how to get back up and pull myself up from the bootstraps and keep going – when I’ve had these moments of stops and starts and lack of access to capital and having to shut down my brand,” the latter being the result of a need for additional financing.

By her forties, Grieco shifted away from imposter syndrome and toward stepping into her power. “Growing up as a Black woman in America, maybe the world's trying to take you down or beat you down,” she says, “but imposter syndrome is a solo journey and you're the only person that can tell you that you're valid and you're worth it and you have to love yourself the most when it comes to believing in yourself. Nobody else is going to love you more than you love yourself.”

She continues, “I think your twenties are about figuring out yourself and you're really into your ego and your thirties, for me, was getting married and having kids. It’s a lot of firsts and a lot of questions, a lot of guilt, and then your forties, you come into them and you understand the value of your worth and that's when my imposter syndrome ended.”

Grieco eventually sold Nyakio Beauty, in 2015, to Sundial Brands, which was later acquired by Unilever in 2016. As a result, Target currently carries the company which bears her and her grandmother’s name; making it far more ubiquitous now than when Grieco was actively involved in the day-to-day.

“Nyakio Beauty was part of an acquisition to Unilever," she explains. "While I'm still involved with the brand, I was also thinking, 'What is it that I want to create next?' I don't think that being an entrepreneur is a one-trick pony. I'd always been thinking, 'What is my next business going to be?' While it was unclear, I knew I wanted to take the experiences that I'd had with Nyakio Beauty and somehow use those experiences to better others' experiences that are in the beauty space.”

THIRTEEN LUNE-ING

As she nears the next decade of her life, Grieco has shifted focus to her newest beauty endeavor “Thirteen Lune,” which addresses just that.

“Just recently I was named the 94th Black woman to ever raise more than a million dollars,” says Grieco, who has raised over $4.5 million since her new company’s 2020 launch – with investors that include Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts, Sean Combs, colorist Tracey Cunningham, Beautycounter CEO Gregg Renfrew, and most recently Fearless Fund. “It was an honor and I was deeply touched to be included in the company of these other incredible women, but it was also heartbreaking for me. I've been at this for twenty years and I know how hard it is to raise capital. In the twenty years that I've been an entrepreneur, how is that number not 9,000 or 94,000? There are so many incredible Black women.”

Grieco is hoping to help change both the venture capital world and beauty landscape through Thirteen Lune’s first-of-its-kind concept, which she created with co-founder Patrick Herning.

"I met Patrick through a friend years ago," she says. "My best friend from Oklahoma who lives here now had said, 'I love this guy Patrick. I feel like you're so passionate about the same things. You talk about inclusion and diversity and fairness and equity all the time. You guys should meet.' She set us up on 'a diversity date.' We hit it off. We would meet for lunch from time to time. We'd talk about different ways that we could collaborate. I love fashion. He loves beauty. We had both played opposite in our spaces and thought, 'Is there a way that we could come together?' Then 2020 happened to all of us. We're in the midst of a global pandemic. We were in the midst of a racial reckoning. Honestly, at that time, I wasn’t too concerned about beauty.”

But once Grieco landed on the aforementioned Black-founded business lists, she and Herning decided the landscape needed to change. “I was shocked when I would look at these lists,” she recalls. “Sometimes I was on lists of 400 Black-founded brands. Sometimes it was a hundred. One time it was a thousand. I couldn’t believe that there were that many brands because, in a lot of ways being a Black female beauty founder who creates products for all people, it's been kind of lonely. I didn't realize there were that many others out there and then when I would start to research these brands, I couldn't believe that they didn't have more followers, that they didn't have more distribution, more visibility. Beautiful pledges like the Fifteen Percent Pledge and Pull Up for Change were also born out of the summer of 2020.”

Grieco decided to do her part by supporting fellow Black beauty brands with the launch of Thirteen Lune. “When you look at the numbers of how much money Black women and Brown women spend on beauty, last year it was 50 million total and 42 million was Black and Brown women,” she says. “Why do we only deserve 15 percent of the space or less?”

Thirteen Lune launched with thirteen Black-owned brands, but has since expanded to include 147 BIPOC and ally brands on their website.

“We have a 90/10 rule,” Grieco explains. “90 percent of all the brands we carry are created by people of color who create products for everyone; 10 percent are dedicated to allyship because I didn’t want this to be just a Black for Black or Brown for Brown platform. Those are great, but we deserve to take up more space and we deserve to sell to more people. Thirteen Lune is a truly inclusive beauty retail platform and a home for these brands to thrive and to survive and to live and grow and create generational wealth.”

Grieco adds, “The allyship piece was A) we’re truly inclusive, but B) I thought that we should honor ally brands [like Goop and Vintner's Daughter] who had long before 2020 been thinking about us in their formulations.”

Additionally, thanks to a Thirteen Lune shop-in-shop partnership with JCPenney department stores – about 40 of those brands now have major distribution with the retail giant. “Ninety days after we launched, we got a call that JCPenney was looking for a partner in their new beauty space,” she says. “They were focused on hyper inclusivity, serving the JCPenney consumer who loves beauty but maybe wants to see themselves better reflected on the shelf and have price sensitivity. So we signed a deal with JCPenney this past fall. We opened our first ten Thirteen Lune stores inside JCPenney and we’re opening 300 more in September and an additional 300 in 2023.”

Grieco says she’s been overwhelmed by the positive feedback from both consumers and brand founders. “I’m living in my purpose,” she says. “This is why I had the experiences that I was lucky enough to live to experience: the heartbreak and the wins for twenty years because I know I’m going to help others to get to success quicker and I’m going to help to build generational wealth through the lens of beauty. The feedback I get is: ‘I can’t believe this hasn’t been created before.’ The feedback I get – whether it be from founders or consumers or people working at JCPenney that look like me – is often tears. ‘Thank you for seeing us.’ That’s all we all ever want is just to be seen and to be heard and to be considered.”

With that in mind, Grieco says Thirteen Lune is about much more than beauty products. “It’s connectivity through the lens of beauty,” she says. “These founders are impactful storytellers and their vessel of storytelling is beauty products, but it’s so much bigger than skin or hair or make-up. It’s a movement and it’s a mission.”

FAMILY LIFE

In addition to Grieco’s thriving career, she’s also a mother of two: her daughter Lulu is sixteen and her son Rocco is eleven. She says that motherhood has long been as big of a priority for her as her professional life. However, she’s quick to point out that the idea of balance is a myth.

“I'm a big believer that I don't believe in the notion of total balance,” she says. “Sometimes some things are going to get a bigger percentage [of our attention] and some things are going to get less. It's about prioritizing and going easy on yourself. As moms, especially working moms, we deal with a lot of guilt. I travel a lot. I show up for a lot of people who I truly care for—obviously, my family is my number one priority, but sometimes family life is getting forty percent and everything else is getting sixty. But I do think that the most important thing is that within your 100 percent that you're dedicating time that is solely for you so that you can be nourished and rested and full because that’s the only way we can show up for others is if we show up for ourselves first.”

Grieco also shares that becoming a mother positively impacted her approach to work. “In a weird way, I would say that having kids made me a bigger risk taker because the stakes were higher and if I was going to go for it—I couldn't just go for it in a way that I was ever doubting [myself],” she says. “I had to dive head first into it and do everything in my power to make whatever my dreams are a reality because it’s important for our kids to see us prioritize our dreams. That teaches them to dream big for themselves. … It's been a family journey and I feel very supported by all of them.”

In fact, her daughter Lulu is in the process of launching a company of her own. “She's quite the activist, quite the feminist, and also a beauty lover,” Grieco says. “She's in the process of developing her own hair care brand. It was her idea. This is something she's wanted to do for quite some time. It's nice to be in a position to be able to help her bring her dreams to fruition. She knows a lot more about the hair care industry than I ever did and it’s fun to learn from her. I think that what you see you do and she's surrounded by incredible people at our Thirteen Lune family that show her that if you dream it, you can turn it into a reality.”

WHAT’S NEXT

In addition to Thirteen Lune, Grieco recently launched “Relevant: Your Skin Seen,” a new beauty brand. “I'm looking to get back into creating products,” she says, sharing that her new company’s first product “One & Done Everyday Cream with SPF 40” is a daily face moisturizer created with clean, mineral-based SPF ingredients and antioxidants for all skin tones. A portion of the company’s proceeds will go toward Grieco’s longtime work with Girls Inc. Los Angeles.

Grieco has big goals for herself and Thirteen Lune. “I see this business growing to great global success,” she says. “This is a global beauty experience/mission/company. There's so much great beauty in the world. I eventually would love to create my own generational wealth and be able to invest back into the people that I believe in and their brands and use this experience of going from beauty founder to beauty retailer to beauty founder. I want to be able to be an investor in our next generation of beauty founders.”

Grieco is undeniably in an envious position. However, by day’s end, it’s clear how hard she’s worked to be where she is today. She says it’s taken her husband, an artist, just as long to see his dream come to fruition, but insists that neither of them would change it for the world. “There are overnight successes, but we are definitely not that,” Grieco reflects.

Her husband, David, chimes in, “We're doing exactly what we wanted to after fighting in our own worlds for twenty years. She’s doing exactly what she dreamed of doing the first time I met her. I met her back then – who she is today. It’s pretty poetic.”

She adds, “I’m almost grateful now for all of the moments that I fell down. I’m triggered by failure. I think the only failure is when you fall down and get stuck in the fall down. The success is getting back up. We’ve had a lot of that. But I don’t think that I would appreciate where I am today had I not had the last twenty years to learn. Beyond that, everything that I've learned in the last twenty years has now allowed me to create a space with Thirteen Lune to help others get to success quicker and while everybody will make their own mistakes, they're not going to make the mistakes that I made.”

HOW THEY LIVE…

Nyakio Grieco lives in Los Angeles’ Windsor Square with her artist-husband David and their two children Lulu and Rocco. The family loves spending time together outdoors. Nyakio says, “During COVID, especially, I had a greater appreciation for having an outdoor space and having a space that we didn’t feel so constricted.” David adds, “I work out and meditate here. I garden. It's fun.”

SELF-CARE SUNDAYS

“Sunday morning is my self-care time,” Nyakio says. “I catch up on rest. In our frenetic and crazy life, I have so little time that’s just me, so that’s their gift to me. They head to the farmers market and I do whatever it is that I need to do to give myself some self-care, whether it be rest, going for a walk, taking a bath, doing my Sunday skincare routine, or hair care routine. It gives me time to reflect on the week. I always feel so energized on Mondays after having a relaxing Sunday and then on Sundays we always like to do family dinners. David’s sister and our niece live here too. So a lot of times they come over and it's very much both of our [families] – his Italian culture, my Kenyan culture – doing the cooking together and doing the big family dinner.”

A LOVE OF GARDENING

“David takes the kids every Sunday morning to the farmers market,” Nyakio says. “They pick out all the produce for the week. David is very into gardening and grows a lot of the produce that we eat. That’s his thing. Look, there’s another strawberry!”

“No, that’s a pepper,” David says.

“Oh, that’s a pepper,” she laughs. “See, I’m not the one with the green thumb.”

“There are strawberries though,” he says. “We have kale and peppers as well and these are little grape tomatoes.” He pauses. “I wanted our kids to have that knowledge when they’re on their own. It sets them up for success.”

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

“I planted all those flowers over there,” David says. “When you open the windows, the whole house smells like jasmine. I love the smell of it. I know they do too.”

THE KIDS’ COLLECTION

"This is my kids' rock and shell collection," Nyakio says. “Eventually, they'll probably all go in the garden. They get them from all over—our travels, the beach.”

CRYSTAL CLEAR INSIGHT

“I'm really into my crystals,” Grieco says. “I do something called circling with my girlfriends. I've done it for many years. My friend Andrea Bendewald has a company called The Art of Circling. We've been doing it as a way to gather and hear each other, be active listeners, and be in a place where we can manifest and support [each other] in a safe space. We love using different totems for their energy.”

HER RINGS

“I love my rings,” she says. “My engagement ring was my mother-in-law’s first engagement ring from the sixties. And that's my band and then I have these little Lulu and Rocco bands.”

HER CRYSTAL JEWELRY

“I'm also really into astrology,” she says. “My astrologer, Victoria Kray, is also a dear friend of mine. She has a company called Victory Astrology and she also is a jewelry designer. Her jewelry company is called Vega. That's when I started getting into crystals and learning from her about the power of the different crystals that she uses to make her jewelry. She would tell us that different crystals would be powerful to have around for whatever it is that we were looking to manifest or celebrate or ground us. I use them in meditation.” She points to another piece. “This little badass bracelet is something my girlfriends gave me when I got InStyle's 50 Badass Women Changing the World,” she says.

PRODUCT DISCOVERY

“We get a lot of inbound [products] now that people have started to hear about Thirteen Lune,” Grieco says. “We have an office, so I've started packing and putting stuff together that I can take over to the office, but then more boxes come. I think we're going to need a bigger house.”

HARVEST9

“This is Harvest9’s Plum Lava,” Grieco says. “This is a brightening facial mask. I love facial masks on Sundays when I do my self-care. Plum oil and plum is great for hydration and it's packed with antioxidants, which is great for the skin.”

KARITE

“This is another brand that I love called Karité,” she says. “The founder [Naana Boakye] is a dermatologist. She uses amazing organic shea butter from Africa. I love it because it's super-rich. Sometimes when you're using shea butter it can be a little grainy, but this is whipped shea butter, so you don't have to worry about not being able to break it down and get it on the skin. Your skin instantly drinks it up and it smells divine. Because she's a dermatologist, she understands the benefits of shea for the skin.”

AMI COLE

“Ami Colé was one of our original thirteen brands that we launched on the site,” Grieco says. “The founder Diarrha [N'Diaye-Mbaye] is amazing. She is African but also raised in Harlem. She came from many amazing beauty companies and wanted to create a make-up brand to honor and celebrate melanin-rich skin. This product is a highlighter that works on all skin tones. I use it—even if I'm not wearing make-up just to pop on my cheeks—just to give a little glow to my skin. Even though her brand is about serving the underserved in make-up and that is her focus, her products are incredible and non-toxic. All the products at Thirteen Lune are non-toxic and good for all, but the fact that she's got these other products that she can expand her consumer base by creating products that work of course on our melanin-rich skin. But can work for everybody. And she's blowing up. I'm excited about all of the success that she's having.”

OLAPLEX

“This is an ally brand,” Grieco explains. “I spoke to you a little bit about allyship and what allyship means and why it's important for our ally brands to be on our site. We also provide the opportunity for our ally brands like Olaplex to share their brands with our community and maybe tell a different story or expand on a story that they're already telling that maybe they're not necessarily getting all of the props for. For instance, when I first heard about Olaplex, I assumed that Olaplex was a product line for white women with blonde hair. I never understood the benefits of how great their hair care is. They are a company that has forever thought about serving all since the inception of time. We’re so honored to have them on our site. They have a huge audience of BIPOC people who use their products and we’re just hoping that through this partnership we can help them to reach even more.”

CTZN

“This is CTZN’s gold eye shimmer,” she says. “This brand was created by three Pakistani sisters [Aleena, Aleezeh, and Naseeha Khan] who live Dubai and London who wanted to celebrate that nude is not just from peach to pink. They created a line of amazing lip glosses and lipsticks that I'm actually wearing right now. That is my nude. They named them each after a city. When you have darker melanin in your lips, your nude is going to be naturally darker. I wear Los Angeles and Sarajevo. This piece here is an eye shadow that works on everybody. A lot of times when people make gold shimmer products, they're not taking into consideration that some of us have a red undertone. Some of us have a yellow undertone. Some of us have a blue undertone, so golds just don't look good. But this gold looks good on everybody with everybody's undertone. It's fun. As I head to Coachella, maybe I'll embarrass my daughter and put the old shimmer and glitter on for the weekend.”

HOLIFROG

“This brand HoliFrog, hands down, makes some of the best cleansers I've ever used,” she says. “This cleanser is the [Sunapee] Sacred-C Powder Wash. It’s a powder cleanser, so it's great for travel. Their products are non-toxic with clean ingredients.”

MINTTY

“This is a new brand that we just launched,” she says. “I’d read a story about a transwoman named Junior Mintt and slid into her DMs to tell her how much I admired what she was doing. She's a Black transwoman in New York and she is responsible for building one of the biggest drag shows in New York. She also created her own make-up brand and she’s using her position as a Black transwoman to be an advocate for the community. She loves make-up. We became friends on DM and now we carry her make-up.”

Grieco continues, “We were in New York working [during the Super Bowl], so we went to one of Junior Mintt’s shows. It was a drag show with the best Super Bowl halftime shows ever with all different drag queens. It was everything from Janet Jackson to Madonna. It was one of the best shows I've ever been to. She's incredible and she's such a force. [My co-host Melissa Magsaysay and I] actually had her on The Beauty Vanguard, our podcast. [It’s incredible] hearing her story and knowing how many lives she's going to save because of her advocacy for her community. I love her. I'm excited to have her brand. We have her lip products as well as a palette that has this bright junior mint green that I love.”

MACABALM

“This is one of my all time favorite products,” she says. “I have it in every size. It’s called Macabalm. This product was created by a Chilean/Australian founder [Pia Whitesell] who grew up in Australia. She uses things like macadamia and [ingredients] that come from Australia to create this product. It's your all-in-one everything. I use it for everything. I use it as a hand cream. I use it sometimes as a primer when my skin is really dry. Now everybody is really into slugging [and slathering their faces with product], but they’re using a lot of things that are not non-comedogenic and clog your pores, but this one is great. Even with make-up on, I can put it on and my skin drinks it up. It feels so good. I'm a big balm girl.”

THE ARTWORK

“This piece is from a series of modern art that my husband did where he was inspired by bread ties that give you the expiration date,” she explains. “He’s created a series honoring significant dates in history. We had a date earlier in history when women were allowed to vote but, at that time, Black women weren't allowed to vote. This date, 'Vote by August 18, 1920' is the date that I consider the date that emancipation and all of that happened for women because then we were all included as voters.”

THE ART STUDIO

“Ever since I started working a lot, I’ve made this my studio,” David says. “So now I put a lot of the pieces in here. A lot of these pieces were actually in the house, but then I brought them out again to be inspired.”

“I hang out with him in here,” Nyakio says.

“We’ll come out and have wine and we’ll talk about art,” David adds. “It’s quite fun and she knows a lot of my inspiration behind a lot of stuff too. She’s part of it, you know? Which is pretty killer. She’s my inspiration. [It’s about] respect and honor and having kids together and all the stuff that we’ve been through together. Jesus Christ, it’s a lot. It’s staying true to one another’s passions.”

“At the end of the day, I like to have a glass of wine and come out here because he sculpts a lot at night,” she says. “So I’ll come out and play music and turn on the lights in the backyard and we have a little fire pit. I love art and so it kind of is like having my own little art space or museum. Even when he’s not here, I’ll just go sit in there and hang out and listen to music. Thanks, babe!”

THE MOCKETTE

“This is a monument he’s doing for the state of New York right now,” Nyakio says. “It’s a mockette of it.”

“This is going to be ten feet in New York,” David says. “I sketched it. I did a 70-page proposal. I sketched all of this. This is going to go in Watertown, New York. There are people from all over the country that [bid] for it and then I ended up getting it which is amazing. It’s a tribute to a city that has such insane history. … It was the first place in America that had the most millionaires ever. So I'm building this – hopefully, this year. If not, hopefully, the spring of next year."

THE DETAILS

“It starts here and then I measure everything,” David explains. “Then I can translate it into a larger piece. … It all comes together like a puzzle. What I’m doing right here in this space will be thousands of years old [one day]. It’s crazy.”

ETERNAL EMBRACE

“I love this piece,” Nyakio says. “This one is called Eternal Embrace. It's just a cool piece. It's one of the first pieces from when I got together with David that he’d been working on and sold. It’s great because we have friends who have this piece in their homes. It’s nice to see how it’s evolved."

MEANINGFUL MEMORIES

“That’s a piece from when I was pregnant with my daughter Lulu,” she says. “He used my pregnancy as inspiration. Every single piece has a story.”

THE SKINNY COWBOY

“I love the Skinny Cowboy because I’m from Oklahoma,” she says. “Isn’t that cool?”

THE ARTICHOKE

“That was a wedding gift for someone,” she says, referencing an artichoke-shaped sculpture.

He says that there’s more to the sculpture than meets the eye. “I have the latitude and longitude of where they met, where they got married, where their kids were born, all of that stuff—in the artichoke,” he says. “It’s generational. It’s like an heirloom.”

“People will come to him to create something,” she explains. “It’s his interpretation of what they’re into and what they like.”

THE WATER DROP

“That piece celebrates the pique of a woman—her body, her mind, her everything,” David says, referencing a bronze marble sculpture called The Release. “I wish I could give that to everybody but especially my wife.”

“This piece is like a water drop,” Nyakio adds. “It’s so beautiful.”

“My mom was my best friend and I was so close to my sisters,” he says of being inspired by the women in his life. “I saw the pique of my mother's beauty and strength, and I wanted to celebrate that in women. There's a moment when I think women feel at their most powerful. I admire that. Especially now, watching her feel so powerful in her skin is the greatest joy I’ve ever had in my life. Getting to know a woman—there’s a lot to get to know. You guys are complicated and amazing. It’s so simple, but it’s so exciting to give yourself and surrender to all that you guys are.”