Beauty That Opens Doors: Rachelle Bravo’s Vision for New Lounge and the Women Behind It

Finding your calling does not always happen in one defining moment. Sometimes, it takes years of trying, building, and discovering what gives your work a deeper sense of purpose. For Rachelle Bravo, that purpose took shape through New Lounge which started in 2017 as a lash and nail studio in Las Piñas with nine women. Nine years later, the homegrown beauty and wellness space has grown to a workforce of around 230 women, many of whom come from low-income families and provinces across the Philippines.

Today, as New Lounge expands beyond its original salon concept, Bravo began exploring how beauty could intersect with wellness, community, and professional development. “New Lounge started with the salon concept, but it’s an evolution of a salon. [We’re now about] elevating the entire experience,” she tells Allure Philippines.

Her recent move into wellness and community experiences through Pamper & Reset was shaped in part by her own experience of establishing a business in the United States. “I created Pamper & Reset because of my journey. I was trying to find community and healing. That’s why I created a wellness experience inspired by emotional wellness,” she shares. What began as a personal search has since developed into gatherings and destination retreats, the first of which was a luxury wellness retreat at Shangri-La Boracay.

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That personal experience also inspired her plans for building a community of beauty and wellness specialists, with which she hopes can make professional knowledge, education, and training more accessible to women.

Taking wellness beyond the salon

NEW Lounge

Through Pamper & Reset, Bravo brings together women, beauty and wellness practitioners, including Korean-American pharmacist and skin care brand founder Soo Ahn, PharmD; wellness entrepreneur Rachel Madar, and hospitality partners for experiences centered on community and emotional wellness. As she describes it, her vision is “creating community experiences, expanding that to destination retreat.”

The Philippines is central to that plan. By working with hospitality partners, Bravo wants to bring practitioners and participants to destinations such as Boracay to “elevate our community, uplift the underserved, and highlight our tourism,” she says. This, she believes, is a way to spotlight her country to a global audience.

NEW Lounge

NEW Lounge

With Pamper & Reset, Bravo is developing a community of specialists across beauty and wellness. She brings to the Philippines practitioners from the United States and Asia, like Ahn and Madar, for them to share their knowledge. For Bravo, bringing qualified professionals together is particularly important at a time when information about beauty and wellness is becoming increasingly difficult to assess. “Because they actually mastered it. They studied it. This will be backed up by science because not everyone really just welcomes any information,” she says.

She also believes that expertise should extend beyond credentials and formal training. “Not only do they know what they’re teaching, but also advocate for what they teach,” Bravo adds. Through this initiative, she hopes to connect practitioners who can share their knowledge while making professional education more accessible to others.

Turning expertise into livelihood

NEW Lounge

This expert-led initiative is also intended to serve communities, particularly women who may not otherwise have access to professional training. Working with Ahn, Bravo hopes to build a sustainable community for beauty technicians. “We both have that vision to lead and bring beauty, use beauty to be the tool to unlock poverty,” she says.

“They will be given access to education, training, and development. It’s going to be for free,” Bravo explains of her plan. She also hopes that participants can eventually enter the beauty industry or establish businesses of their own.

NEW Lounge

To support the program, Bravo says she is in discussions with nonprofit organizations and international funders. She also sees potential for the initiative to reach communities abroad. “What if I get funding from the US to actually sustain this kind of project? And not only that. Of course, it will go to the Philippines. [Now,] there are also organizations that want to adopt that exact program for California,” she explains.

A vision rooted in paying it forward

NEW Lounge

NEW Lounge

As Bravo’s work takes on a wider reach, she remains focused on the people at the center of it. Whether through beauty services, wellness experiences, or professional training, she sees each initiative as part of a larger effort to open doors for others. “It’s always going to be connected to helping the underserved,” she emphasizes.

She describes this mission through the allusion of the seed and sower. Each person she encounters, she explains, has the potential to grow when given the right care, resources, and opportunities. In time, that growth can extend beyond the individual and create opportunities for others. “I see it as every person that I encounter, they are a seed just like me. And you allow that seed, you nurture that seed to grow by years, right? By taking care of it. You talk to it, you feed it, you water it, give it sunlight, it will grow to a beautiful tree. And then until such time when it’s ready to harvest, then that’s the next cycle to become a sower,” Bravo says.

As New Lounge and its related initiatives continue to evolve, Bravo’s ambition is to make that cycle of opportunity extend further. Beauty may have been where her work began, but she sees its potential in what it can make possible for others: a skill to build a career, a community to find support in, and eventually a gateway to improve the lives of more women.