YLN Your Loving Nature

YLN Your Loving Nature is a small German natural-cosmetics label for hair, face and body, based in Berlin. It was founded in 2012 by Marion Garz, a hairdresser who also runs the salon and shop in the Mitte district where the products are used and sold [1]. The brand is known mainly for solid formats: shampoo bars, a solid leave-in conditioner and solid face creams, made in small batches by partner manufactories in and around Berlin.

The label grew out of the salon rather than a laboratory. Garz developed her first hair care line with her own clients as testers, and the range has since widened step by step from hair into skincare and body care. In 2021 YLN reached the final of the German Sustainability Award (Deutscher Nachhaltigkeitspreis) in its "Vorreiter" (pioneers) category. The brand remains active and founder-owned.

Marion Garz was born in Bavaria and moved to Berlin, where she settled in her own hair salon in 2003. Her route there was not a straight line. According to a 2022 interview with the sustainability magazine Eco Twin, she trained as a hairdresser, then worked in theatre, studied at an art school, returned to salon work and took on international hair and make-up jobs. The same profile describes her as a make-up artist, artist and photographer as well as a hairdresser [12].

Garz herself ties the brand's beginnings to an allotment garden on the edge of Berlin. In a personal essay on the company website she recalls taking over the 800-square-metre plot in 2004, when it had been cleared of plant life with weedkiller and looked, in her words, more like a golf course than a garden [2]. She spent years bringing back vegetables, fruit trees and perennials. One summer she sublet her city flat and lived in the garden full-time, working in the salon only three days a week. She later called this period her first "City-Detox". Her art shifted towards plants and insects, and in 2011 she staged a room installation, OBSERVARE, in the garden itself. A later post on the brand's journal calls the garden years "the birth of YOUR LOVING NATURE".

According to the company, a preference for minimalism, sensitivity and responsibility towards the environment led her to found YLN in 2012 [1]. The Eco Twin interview gives the same year, and adds that her main motive was frustration with the shortcomings of the hair products already on the market. The company's contact page lists Garz as both owner and founder [3], and no parent company or outside owner is documented.

The 2012 founding date marks the label rather than its first products. On a page describing the brand's history, Garz dates the start of development and testing to 2016, with her salon acting as a test lab and her clients helping along the way. "One year later", she writes, the first small hair care series was finished, which places the first finished products in 2017 [4]. The homepage, in a separate and undated line, says the team has been developing natural hair and skin care "for over nine years".

Growth since then has been gradual. Two skincare products were added at the end of 2019, and three body care products followed a year later. The current shop is organised into hair, face and body, alongside natural-bristle brushes. In the salon, the team uses only YLN's own hair care products, a point both the brand and an independent manufactory directory make.

Production has remained small-scale and local. In its FAQ, the company says it works closely with three small natural-cosmetics manufactories in Berlin and the surrounding area [10]. The liquid hair care products, it adds, are sold only at the Berlin salon and store, for storage reasons.

YLN sums up its approach as "less is often more, provided the quality is right" [1]. In practice, the company says, this means products made as concentrates rather than diluted with water where possible, no alcohol as a preservative, no petroleum derivatives and no ingredients it regards as unnecessary. It calls this combination its version of clean beauty. The brand also describes the future of its hair care as "Biotech-Beauty": pure natural ingredients combined with actives produced through biotechnology, which it says saves farmland, energy and water.

The motivation is spelled out in the brand's own account. Garz writes that, as a hairdresser and privately, she no longer felt comfortable with petroleum-based hair products containing silicones, polyquaternium (a common conditioning agent), synthetic colours and fragrances, or alcohol preservation. She also objected to formulas she saw as heavily watered down. Over the years, she says, dry hair stood out as the most common problem among her clients, and even well-known hair care brands did not offer a convincing answer. Her response was to seek out natural-cosmetics specialists and small manufactories willing to develop products with her that would meet a hairdresser's standards and be made in Germany [4].

The salon follows the same thinking. Garz calls herself a "Naturfriseur" (natural hairdresser) and admits it is a made-up word. The salon does not offer classic hair colouring; instead it lightens strands freehand without aluminium foil, a technique it calls "Paintings". The company names sustainability, fairness and authenticity as the principles behind both the products and how they are made and sold. Its stated aim is a noticeably better feel for skin and hair, visible and lasting results, satisfied customers, and a contribution to environmental protection within the means of a small business.

Solid products sit at the centre of the range. YLN says the solid format lets ingredients such as medicinal herbs, sea salt, honey, blue algae, plant charcoal and pure plant oils be worked in at high concentration. The company describes its solid shampoos as a way to wash hair without plastic bottles, dilution or petroleum derivatives.

The hair line includes the SHAMPOO BAR sensitiv, a mild shampoo in Green Tea, Ylang Ylang / Rosewood and unscented Plain versions, and the SHAMPOO BAR intense in Mint (for volume) and Pure (fragrance-free, for shine). The best-known item is the MOISTURIZING BAR, a solid leave-in conditioner worked into damp lengths after washing. Garz says it is the most effective leave-in moisturiser for dry hair she has used as a hairdresser and stylist, and that the sensitiv shampoo combined with this bar is all that around 90 per cent of her clients need. The brand also suggests the bar for wet shaving. For thicker, drier or grey hair it offers EXTREME CREME and a hair oil, INTENSIVE PFLEGE.

On the face side, the CLEANSING BAR and CREAM BAR are presented as a pair. The cleanser combines volcanic clay, activated charcoal, grapeseed and broccoli seed oil, corn starch and a mild cleansing agent, and lathers like a soap. The CREAM BAR is a solid face cream made from cocoa, shea and mango butters, almond and babassu oils and beeswax. The skincare range is built to be modular. The №9 BASIC SKIN set pairs the cleanser with the cream, while the №17 COMPLETE SKIN RITUAL adds a face toner with niacinamide and aloe vera, a face oil made from five plant oils and a hyaluronic acid serum. The brand pitches that set at anyone over 50.

The first hair care series was described at launch as handmade, vegan and free from silicones, alcohol and petroleum [4]. That description applies to the original series. Later products include beeswax in the CREAM BAR and honey among the bar ingredients, so the range as a whole is not vegan. No third-party certifications are documented.

Packaging is a recurring theme. YLN uses solid concentrates or glass bottles where it can, and the company says its airless dispensers are made from a single composite material that can go into Germany's household packaging recycling. It states that its products contain no microplastics and avoid unnecessary packaging, and that it deliberately avoids mineral-oil-based and synthetic ingredients [6]. Regional, small-batch production with a handful of German manufactories is also part of how the company describes its environmental approach.

In July 2021 YLN was nominated for the Deutscher Nachhaltigkeitspreis, Germany's national sustainability award, and reached the final in the "Vorreiter" category, according to the company [4]. The brand was a finalist, not a winner. The placement is also noted by the Deutsche Manufakturenstrasse, a Berlin-based directory of German manufactories, which in 2022 described YLN as pioneers that had shown the hairdressing trade a new direction [13].

YLN Your Loving Nature is active. As of September 2026, its website, online shop and journal were online, and the homepage had been updated that month [1]. The salon and store at Ackerstrasse 166 in Berlin-Mitte remains the brand's home base, and Marion Garz continues to run the business as owner and founder.