What Do Luxury Fashion and Herbalism Have in Common? Ask Medea Juhasz

Most supplement brands don’t begin at a kitchen table with a former luxury fashion executive experimenting with Chinese herbs and superfoods. But Herbalore isn’t exactly a conventional supplement brand.

Long before founding Herbalore, Medea Juhasz was struggling with her own health. She was severely overweight, dealing with chronic digestive issues, high cholesterol, hair loss, and a weakened immune system that left her taking antibiotics almost every other month. Something had to change.

“My diet was terrible, and I reached a point where I knew I had to completely change my life,” she recalls.

Nearly a year later, she’d developed the formula that would become the foundation of Herbalore.

From personal experiment to product

Determined to take control of her health, Juhasz immersed herself in the study of natural wellness, experimenting with everything from superfruits and amino acids to Chinese herbs. She spent months adjusting ingredients, tinkering with ratios, and paying close attention to how her body responded.

As it turned out, finding the right ingredients was only half the battle.

“The real secret was finding the precise ratios and understanding how certain ingredients interacted with one another,” she explains.

Around the tenth or eleventh month, Juhasz landed on a combination that she says made a remarkable difference in her health. Many of the issues she’d been struggling with began to improve, and that combination would eventually become Catalyst Gold, Herbalore’s signature supplement.

“Herbalore was never created because I saw a trend or decided I wanted to start a supplement company,” she says. “It grew organically out of my own health transformation and, later, the needs I kept hearing from my clients.”

After her own experience, Juhasz went on to study holistic nutrition, Eastern European herbalism, and Chinese herbal medicine before eventually working with private clients. While she created individualized wellness protocols for each person, she kept hearing the same complaint: too many supplements, too many bottles, too many pills. Some clients were taking upwards of 20 pills a day. Hardly anyone’s idea of a sustainable wellness routine.

“My clients started asking me, ‘Why can’t we just have your magic formula?’”

That was the turning point.

Juhasz began recommending her personal formula to clients dealing with similar concerns. Along with reported improvements in energy and weight management, she says some clients noticed unexpected changes, including fuller-looking hair, stronger nails, and more radiant skin.

“I had initially focused on addressing specific wellness concerns, but the results suggested that the formula could offer much broader benefits,” she says.

For Juhasz, it reinforced something she’d come to believe through her own experience: wellness isn’t necessarily about addressing every concern with a different product. Sometimes, a more holistic approach makes more sense.

Juhasz’s background in luxury fashion also influenced how she wanted to introduce Herbalore to the world. At a time when supplements were largely confined to health food stores, she envisioned something that felt more at home on a beauty shelf.

“My vision was always that Herbalore should be packaged more like a beautiful perfume or luxury candle than a traditional supplement,” she says. “I wanted Catalyst Gold to be something that could sit next to a Chanel perfume or a Dior bag on the shelf of a concept store.”

Less is more (even in wellness)

If there’s one thing Juhasz believes the wellness industry could use less of, it’s complication.

Between restrictive diets, ever-changing health trends, and supplement routines that require their own organizational system, taking care of yourself can start to feel like another full-time job.

“I never understood why someone should need 15 or 16 different bottles to support different areas of their health,” she says.

That frustration became a guiding principle behind Herbalore’s formulations. Rather than creating a separate supplement for every concern, Juhasz set out to develop multipurpose products designed to support several aspects of wellness at once.

Catalyst Gold was formulated with the goal of supporting hair, skin, and nails, weight management, energy, immunity, digestion, and longevity in one product.

She took a similar approach with Platinum Flash, a formula focused on hormonal wellness and performance for both men and women. Designed with hormonal balance, libido, mood, focus, energy, stamina, strength, and overall vitality in mind, it also places particular emphasis on women navigating menopause and hormonal changes.

The idea is simple: fewer bottles, less complication, and products that realistically fit into everyday life. But for Juhasz, supplements are only part of the equation.

The wellness habit she swears by

For someone who has spent years studying nutrition, herbalism, and supplements, Juhasz’s biggest piece of wellness advice is surprisingly simple: eat real food.

“I always say, eat the way our great-grandparents ate. Real food, simple ingredients, foods as close to their natural state as possible.”

Beyond diet, she emphasizes daily movement, quality sleep, and consistency over the latest wellness trends.

“You can take every supplement in the world and follow every new biohacking trend, but if the foundation isn’t there, you’re missing the most important piece.”

It’s a philosophy that continues to shape Herbalore. As Juhasz puts it, “We have made wellness incredibly complicated, when so much of it comes back to the basics.”