From high fashion to organic farming and now wholly natural skincare, Hindy Weber expands environmental consciousness through projects rooted in nature and mindfulness
“Farming” and “fashion” aren’t words you’d typically pair together. Yet for Hindy Weber, the two go hand-in-hand, tied closely to the way of life she upholds.
Having been a longtime fixture in the fashion cosmos, Weber embraces her years of experience with grace and wisdom. As she grounds herself—quite literally—in the earth, she channels her energies into sustainable farming, fashion, and her latest venture, natural skincare.
“I don’t see any difference between my farming work, my fashion work, and my skincare that I do,” she explains. “Everything I do has the same foundational principles, you know? So it shouldn’t hurt the people or the planet or yourself. It should encourage growth and creation. More regenerative.”
While forest bathing offers both mental and physical rejuvenation, Weber’s au naturel skincare products seem to capture a similar holistic healing experience, echoing the life-giving vibrations of her happy place, Holy Carabao Farm. As she walks around the farm donning her all-natural slow fashion designs, Weber shares how her projects cultivate more than just crops but also a philosophy that supports living in tune with the earth.
From fashion to farming
“My first foray into fashion was as a model,” Weber recalls. “I think I was 13 or 14 years old when I started modeling. And I didn’t really feel comfortable. I was so shy.” But this led her to seek out her true calling—finding joy in fashion design.
After finishing a communication arts degree at Ateneo de Manila University, Weber pursued a postgraduate degree at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.
For years, Weber became a fixture in Manila’s retail industry.
But the rigid structure and frenetic pace eventually took its toll. “Back in the 2000s when I was a young designer, we had a lot of quotas and requirements. We had global trends to follow, and marketing strategies and OTBs, or open to buys. It was very driven by global market trends. Even the colors.”
“In a sense it helped me because it was very disciplined,” clarifies Weber. “But after 10 years, I got burnt out, churning out design after design. Then it kind of lost the spirit for me.”
At this time, Weber took a sabbatical and discovered her passion for produce, long before the rise of urban farming.
“I moved to Laguna and I started growing food in the backyard. I just hired one gardener. He wasn’t really a farmer. But we learned together, and we started cultivating more of the land around our house,” Weber shares.
This humble beginning evolved into Holy Carabao Farm, a purely educational farm that teaches children and families about sustainable agriculture, and growing produce for the farm’s next-door school community, the Acacia Waldorf School in Laguna.
While Weber is still in fashion, she now strictly adheres to slow and sustainable design practices, crafting clothes from organic materials only.
The Holy Carabao Farm
Weber lights up whenever she talks about her kids and the work she does at the farm. Located right next to the Acacia Waldorf School, there are roaming ducks, a rabbit and guinea pig pen, and best of all, a carabao bathing in the mud, which takes visitors on the occasional joyride.
Weber references the 2020 documentary “Kiss the Ground,” narrated by Woody Harrelson, which highlights soil regeneration as a key solution to climate change. The farm and adjacent school serve as the Philippine affiliate for this initiative, aligning the documentary’s principles into the grade school curriculum. They have also tailored the resource to our local context, from weather conditions to the cultural nuances in communities.
Education seems to be a priority in Weber’s work, both through her farm and the school, where she heads the farming committee. “It’s a very active community,” she says. “It’s not for the kind of parent who just wants to drop off their kids. They’re always going to have you volunteer for something, and they’ll find what you like as a parent.”
“As a young girl, I was always into the environment. I was part of Greenpeace and a member of the World Wildlife Fund. I wanted to be a zoologist… I didn’t become a scientist and I didn’t become an environmentalist because my path went into creative fashion… but when we started the farm, that was a full circle moment.”
Hindy Weber’s au naturel skincare
Weber’s regenerative approach to beauty shows in her daily routine, too, which she clarifies as personal and unique to her needs. “I’m 51 now, and I have my own bodily hormonal changes that I have to deal with… I love the sun, and I get a lot of my healing from the full light spectrum from the sun. But for some reason, my skin is so reactive to a little sunshine that I start to develop hyperpigmentation or redness… Of course, we all have different lifestyles and different diets, so our skin will always react differently.”
In 2021, in between COVID-19 lockdowns, Weber launched her own skincare line. The products were developed in collaboration with natural formulator Ana Gutierrez of Body Food. “Everything that I use on my face, I’ve been researching for 20+ years… Just like my food, I’m very careful about what I put on my skin. Our skin is the largest organ in our body, and it is a barrier, but it also absorbs everything that we put in it.”
One of the star products in her line is the Healing Face Oil, mixed with golden jojoba, pili nut, black cumin, and evening primrose oil. Weber says that it’s used by women of all ages, from great aunts to her daughter’s friends in high school. “It’s a protective and nourishing face oil that will help regenerate skin cells… also the lipid barrier of your skin, which will make it more resistant to photodamage [from the sun] or free radical damage.”
She rubs the oil on her hands and takes a big whiff. “It even smells amazing,” with a lovely scent of patchouli, sandalwood, and roses.
The line includes a hair oil called Divine Intervention that balances the flora or biomes on the scalp. She squeezes drops into her palm and tousles her hair into a “wet look.” To be used before a bath or as a hair mask, Weber jokes, “It can double as a beard oil for your own beard. Just kidding! For your man’s beard.”
There’s also a Restorative Eye and Lash Balm for dark circles and fine lines around the eye. With a mix of castor oil, it can help hair regrowth for eyebrows and lashes. “I don’t know about you guys, but at a certain age, the lashes and the eyebrows start to fall off,” she says, “Like, what’s that about?”
Promoting passion and self-love, Weber has developed My Pleasure Intimate & Body Balm, a sensuous lubricant with virgin coconut oil, beeswax, and hints of vanilla, sandalwood, orange, and rose. Meanwhile the Dewy Blush Stick serves as a multipurpose cheek and lip tint for that instant sun-kissed glow for days on the go.
The products all come in small containers, crafted out of raw, organic, and biodegradable materials. While the packaging can be reused, most of the products are multi-use and can be applied for different purposes on different parts of the body. She grabs the products up in two hands. “I created this whole line because I want it easy. Like you don’t have to think when you travel. You just bring it, and you’re set. You don’t need anything else. I wanted it to be easy, everyday, effortless beauty.”
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For Weber, she’s made clear that beauty is never skin-deep. It’s always deeply connected to our relationship with nature and well-being, then nurturing this connection.
Since moving to Laguna, she reflects on how she’s grown aware of nature’s rhythms, from monthly cycles to movements from day to night.
“We’re in a time in our lives, in the world today, where we’re starting to become more aware of the spiritual side in our lives. When we understand that we’re not just physical beings… There’s spirit in nature, and a spirit in us. Everything we do, what we eat, how we dress, what we put on our skin, work that we do—we’ll all grow from that.”
Looking to the future, she envisions a new space that brings together all aspects of her work, to grow awareness of holistic and sustainable practices. “I want to have a space that showcases our work in apparel and beauty. Kind of like a workshop space where people can come and look at what and how we’re doing things, and shop if they want to.”
Photography by Joseph Pascual
Creative direction by Nimu Muallam-Mirano
Produced by Pauline Miranda
Shot at Holy Carabao Farm