User:Lavee88/LydiaDraft

Lydia Sarfati is a Polish-born American esthetician, entrepreneur, consultant and author. She is credited for introducing seaweed-based skin treatments in the United States, and known as a pioneer in the field of modern cosmetics. In 1980, she founded the Sarkli-Repêchage cosmetics company, together with her husband David. Sarfati is a member of several professional associations, a consultant for the spa industry and author of several books on cosmetology and wellness.

Early Life
Lydia Sarfati, neé Lydia Mops, was born in Legnica, Poland. She is the daughter of Polish Jews Szloma and Sofia Mops, both of whom were survivors of the Holocaust. Her father's family was almost entirely killed by the Nazis, while her mother had been hold prisoner in a labor camp in Russia during World War II. During her time in Poland, she took her first professional training, a medically-oriented skin care course. Due to a growing anti-Semitic atmosphere in her native Poland, Lydia emigrated together with her parents to Italy, after a brief period spent in Vienna. In 1970, the Mops family got the opportunity to leave for the United States, and settled in New York, where Lydia got her first job as a makeup artist in a salon on Madison Avenue.

In New York, Lydia met her future husband, David Sarfati, and the two married in 1972. A year later, the couple had their first and only child, Shiri Sarfati. To support her, Lydia worked as an esthetician in Queens and, in the evenings, she received private customers at the makeshift beauty salon she had improvised at her home.

Founding of Klisar and Repêchage
In the late '70s, Sarfati noticed that skin care was still largely neglected in the United States. Together with a friend, Shoshana Kliot, she opened a salon, the Klisar Skin Care Center, in September 1977, and in just a few months, some of New York's most glamorous figures came to receive the novel skin treatments created by Sarfati. The popularity of the salon only grew when magazines such as Vogue, Mademoiselle and Harper's Bazaar, and the New York Times Magazine wrote about Sarfati's advanced esthetic services.

The next step for Sarfati was to establish her own line of cosmetic products. In 1983, she gave up on her successful salon business, and sold her share to her partner. Her goal was to produce and market a facial product that could be easily applied even by beginners, and still provide excellent results. The result of her efforts was the four-layer facial produced by the Repêchage company, which she founded together with her husband.

In addition to facials, Repêchage manufactured basin cleaners, lotions, moisturizers and other skin care treatments. One of the most successful products was the full body treatment based on seaweed, the use of which Sarfati pioneered in the United States. Besides seaweed, Repêchage and Lydia Sarfati also popularized other ingredients used in thalassotherapy, such as sea water and salts.