You were a world-class hairdresser from Austria. You settled in Minneapolis and became a world-class party animal. You got deathly ill, and decided to heal not only yourself but the world. You sold Aveda for $300 million. Meet your Rakish readers, HORST.
Horst Rechelbacher is filthy rich. He’s also a pure soul, spending as much as seven hours a day in serious meditation and yogic practice. The 61-year-old stylist, photographer, entrepreneur, and activist has long made his home in the Twin Cities.
Horst arrived in Minneapolis when he was still a young man with a rich Austrian accent. Having become a world-class hairdresser at the tender age of 14, he had already toured most of the world before he was an adult. In 1965, he was passing through the area when he was involved in a nearly fatal automobile accident. He spent several months in the hospital, and by the time he got out, he was saddled with what seemed like a lifetime of medical bills. He decided to set up his own hair salon here, and the rest is history.
But what a history! Through the 60s and 70s, he maintained his platinum reputation as a stylist, while experimenting with his own cosmetics and hair-care supplies. At the same time, he’d become interested in Eastern philosophy and religion. It was a fast-paced, jet-setting lifestyle. Ultimately, in the mid-70s, it all caught up to him and he had a physical breakdown he describes as being “completely zapped.” His mother, an Austrian apothecary, came to Minnesota and helped nurse her son back to health. At about this time, a light went on. He saw with clarity new connections between his spiritual interests, his business ventures, and his personal history. He suddenly became interested in his mother’s traditional herbal infusions and preparations, and sensed a connection to some of the Eastern philosophies he’d been exposed to in India, Nepal, and Tibet.
Horst began to see that “the human body and the planetary body are totally symbiotic.” He studied and received a degree in Ayurvedic medicine, the traditional Indian approach to healing that uses 175 essential oils prepared from plants and flowers. He started meditating on a regular basis. He began to sense that his industry was ripe for a revolution—and he was right. In 1978, he launched Aveda—a Sanskrit word meaning “all knowledge”—to engender his new principles about personal and global renewal, while trying to eliminate the use of toxins and petrochemicals in personal care products.
In 1997, he sold Aveda to Estee Lauder for $300 million. Frustrated by the constant pressure of running a business that had outgrown him, he decided to focus on the things that mattered most to him: meditation and activism. And yet, before long he’d had another idea for a new enterprise: Intelligent Nutrients, a progressive food and supplement retailer. It seems that no matter how retired or wealthy the man becomes, he grows restless to be involved with either a noble cause, a global business, or (ideally) both.
In October, Horst launched a new personal adventure: an art gallery in Northeast Minneapolis, just down the road from the Aveda Institute. Horst Galleries will feature Eastern and emerging artists, and profits from the gallery will benefit charitable causes like preserving traditional medicine and promoting awareness about cancer. His first show featured the work of Romio Shristha, a Tibetan who paints thankgas. These are beautiful, highly detailed, traditional medical illustrations. It was the perfect debut for Horst, combining his love of fine art, his personal interest in Eastern spirituality, and his professional involvement with the traditional, indigenous medicine of Asia.
We met with Horst while the paint was still drying on his new office walls, and Shristha’s show was being hung. Horst is a centered man, he laughs easily and uproariously, and he is genuine about his passions. Like anyone who has cashed out the way he’s cashed out, he knows what he likes, and has no problem demanding it from those around him.
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