Yarok Plant-Based Products "Feed" Hair and Body In Hudson

Yarok, a premium, all-natural brand of hair and body products, has a new home in Hudson. Founder Mordechai Alvow brings with him decades of experience working on the world's most glamorous heads to a minimalist carriage house storefront just off Warren on 7th Street.

The quality and pedigree of Yarok has been extolled in the pages of just about every major international beauty magazine over the years, but Alvow says staying committed to his process is more important than praise. Yarok products are formulated exclusively from organic, wild-crafted and otherwise responsibly harvested plant ingredients that are handpicked for their medicinal and sensory benefits.

“Yarok is food for your hair and scalp and body,” says Alvow. “It’s organic, vegan, clean and pure. Yarok means pure.”

Alvow was born and raised in Israel when it was, as he characterized it, still a young country. As a boy he loved ceramics and soon found hair styling similarly tactile in its artistry. The thing he soon fell in love with was that with people, rather than clay, he got this instant emotional response. He made people happy. As a teen, at the department store where his fashionista mother worked, he dressed the hair of the country’s handful of supermodels before attending the Vidal Sassoon school in London. In 1989, when he was 21, he moved to America, after two compulsory years in the Israeli army.

“Where I grew up in Jaffa there were still orange trees in the streets, the city is on the ocean and everything grew around us,” said Alvow. “The smell of it informed my connection to nature very young. My mother took me to apothecaries. I loved the scents and the look of the bottles. I remember my grandmother, who was Turkish, had this little garden and she made potions for stomachaches or if you were wounded.”

The new Yarok shop in Hudson feels like a modern, minimalist apothecary. And there is old-world energy infused in his modern potions. To capture the idea that his products, made from organic edible sources, are designed to nourish, they are named after what they do. Products like Feed Your Do, Feed Your Curls, Feed Your Moisture and others endeavor to replenish hair and scalp. Yarok also has a growing line of body products including a body wash and face mask that strive to do the same for your skin.

When Alvow arrived in America he dropped into Los Angeles in hair spray’s heyday. He pumped up the volume for hair metal bands like White Snake and MSG. His own head became a walking billboard for his work and he quickly became successful. Mariah Carey took note of his hair — which looked a lot like hers at the time — and he was her stylist for over a year (before Tommy Mottola toned her down).

Soon, Alvow switched coasts and by 23 he opened his own salon Moty Moty, in Manhattan on 23rd between Lexington and Park. He made an impact right away by bringing downtown looks to uptown customers. But after a while all the chemicals started to burn and blister his skin. He realized he had gotten away from his childhood love of natural products and aromas.

“By 31 years old I had two salons and 20-plus employees. It was driving me crazy,” he admits.

He started mixing up natural hair treatment products in his apartment and was invited to set up a salon in the Equinox fitness club, which centered on natural products. The healthful approach to beauty care inspired him but soon he wanted to leave the salon and get out in the world.

In the 2000s he worked freelance on photo shoots for major magazines. It introduced Yarok to models and industry insiders who were surprised to see him get the high-level results they needed with natural products. He worked on everyone including Naomi Watts, Catherin Zeta-Jones, Marissa Tomei, Serena and Venus Williams, and many, many more.

“When I wasn’t working I was mixing. I was choosing scents, choosing bottles, at a highly technical level,” Alvow says. “It was so important to me to me that everything I made was all from nature.”

In 2006 Yarok was finally launched as a public brand. Since then, the brand has expanded, he started a salon, closed it, and focused more energy on the product line which continues to grow.

Alvow’s products are made in the U.S. in small batches. The production runs are small enough that he often introduces seasonal items, like this summer’s bug spray, which smells better than any you’ll find and has fewer than a dozen natural ingredients. Every aspect of Yarok has been thought out to be as natural and impactful as possible. He donates a over 3% of his earnings to causes that support the environment and indigenous people.

“I don’t just think about the outside. I care about how people feel and the end result. I want to make sure this is absolutely clean," says Alvow, who is also trained in aromatherapy.

After many years at the top of the industry, Alvow was finally able to realize another dream and adopted his son Boaz. He wanted to move his new little family out of the hustle and raise his child in in a setting that could shape and inspire them both. His son arrived at the beginning of the pandemic. The two really got to know each other, as he had the seven-month-old to himself in a new house in a new town.

Alvow says Hudson is the perfect environment for him to grow Yarok, while connecting with his customers one on one. The shop is the start of a new chapter for Alvow. A slower, calmer chapter that gets back to his natural roots.