Kate McLeod, the founder behind the cult body-care brand that bears her name, didn’t set out to build a beauty brand. Her path wound through finance, pastry school and yoga teaching before a piece of cocoa butter, pressed into her palm by her late sister-in-law, changed the course of her life—and her career. Now best known for The Body Stone—a solid, delectable chunk of cocoa butter that has become a staple in bathrooms across the globe, McLeod’s brand is thriving—and much of the magic is cooked up right from within the walls of her Chelsea home.
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Below, McLeod takes us inside her sun-drenched New York City office where she dreams up new products, takes client calls over cacao, and keeps herself—quite literally—surrounded by stones.
A Room Built On Grounding
Unlike the rest of her home, which she describes as intentionally dark and cave-like, McLeod’s office is the lightest room in the house. “I’m a cancer, and I am a true crab. I absolutely love my nest,” she says, explaining that the space still needed to reflect the same sense of groundedness she chases everywhere else. “I wanted to spend my day in a room that felt light and ethereal and uplifting and open to that creative energy,” she says. “Lighting to me is absolutely everything.”
Just as the clarity of light was intentional, so is every object within the space. The room’s shelving system was built specifically to keep her surrounded by reference points that she treats as working inspiration. “I really wanted shelves because I wanted to be surrounded by things that just grounded me and also let touchpoints of different things in my life.”
Those shelves are filled with mementos from her travels—including small eggs collected on a trip to visit the Temple of Isis in Egypt—alongside stones, beaded bracelets made by her children and rotating seasonal collections, all of which serve as creative inspiration. “Cookbooks, cookbooks everywhere,” she states, pointing to a lifetime spent collecting them from South Africa, Australia and small European restaurants. “I’m overrun with cookbooks.” The effect is the culmination of a space that functions like a mood board she lives inside, one she can pull from when she’s developing new products or thinking through the brand’s direction.
Her shelves also hold the books that shaped her: Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser, The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck and The Untethered Soul. “The first book I was ever given where I was really like, wow, is Broken Open,” she says. “I’ve given this to so many friends.”
Tucked among the wood and stone throughout the airy space are lighter touches: a wallpaper mural that turns one wall into a piece of art, wooden boxes filled with her children’s school projects—including her daughter Margaux’s papier-mâché beehive—and a small pink ceramic object that reads, simply, “Don’t do the same shit this year.” “I look at it all the time,” McLeod says. “It’s a great reminder.”
The Unique Story Behind Her Desk
McLeod’s desk was custom-made by upstate New York woodworking company Sawkill, and it holds three inlays that trace the emotional architecture of her brand. The first is her company logo—a figure in tree pose formed from the letters of “Kali,” the Hindu goddess of raw feminine power. “I believe the way we charge up that feminine energy is by taking care of ourselves,” McLeod explains. “The practice of the body stone to me is actually the practice of coming back, connecting, finding home with yourself.”
The second inlay is a hummingbird, a tribute to her late sister-in-law who first put a piece of cocoa butter in her hands on a family vacation in Nantucket. “We lost her later that same year to cancer,” McLeod says. “Our family’s thought is that whenever we see a hummingbird, it’s Deb… I don’t think any person has had a greater impact on the trajectory of my life.” The third is a small deer. “When I am really, really happy and relaxed and in my body, my husband once observed that I tend to prance when I dance”—which is how she ended up with the nickname Prancer.
Elsewhere on the desk, sage and sweetgrass sit ready for burning (“sweetgrass can call in the positive”), alongside a small dish of tiny heart-shaped stones she hands out to friends going through hard days. “I guess it’s kind of like a calling card,” she says, “but more just like I really want to leave you with a little bit of love and a token to remember to come back to that love for yourself.”
The Unusual Place Where The Body Stone Began
McLeod’s kitchen—an extension of her home office and just as central to how she runs the business—is where The Body Stone itself was invented and where she still often develops new formulas today [she has since moved homes from the birthplace of the original formulation]. “I always have a few chocolate molds around because I used to make all my own chocolate,” she says. Her pastry background gave her both the technique and the tools she used to land on a workable formula: melting raw cocoa butter down in a double boiler, the same way she once tempered chocolate, and blending in oils. “That was where the body stone was born.”
That same resourcefulness shaped the brand’s packaging and, by extension, its identity in the market. Unable to find a manufacturer willing to work in small batches, McLeod wrapped early units of the body stone in cheesecloth—a decision that became a signature element of her product and paved the way for how the product is still presented to this day. “You wrap something up that is sacred,” she says. “There’s nothing more sacred than the process, the ritual, the practice of coming home to yourself.” The bamboo canisters came from a similar instinct, inspired by a salt tin on her windowsill. “Bamboo repels water, and it also has airflow,” she says. “It’s going to keep it cool and protected.”
Rather than working from behind her desk all day, McLeod takes nearly all of her meetings at the kitchen counter or from a window bench seat she had extended shortly after moving in—a setup she credits with making her more present and effective with her team and clients. “I love to sit and connect with someone,” she says. “I love sharing a cup of cacao.” Caffeine-free for six years, she instead blends bone broth, dates and cacao each morning, a ritual she says keeps her energy steady through back-to-back conversations without the crash. “It just gives you this light, buzzy, open, connective feeling.”
Her cupboards double as a mini shop of her own products, including the brand’s insect-repelling moisturizer and its intimacy-focused Sex Stone, both of which she keeps on hand to give away. “I basically have a store inside my house,” she says.
How She Built Something From Nothing
Asked who has influenced her most, McLeod points to her husband, Hinge founder Justin McLeod, whose early struggles with the dating app shaped how she thinks about her own business. “Hinge was failing, failing, failing, failing,” she recalls. “The thing about him… is that a business, a relationship, if you keep showing up, if you keep putting something into it, it’s love. Love is a choice. You have to nourish it.” That philosophy, she says, runs straight through her own work—a body-care ritual built not around glamour but around the simple, repeated act of taking care of yourself.
CREDIT
Photography: Henry Hargreaves
Art Direction and Design: Jeehae Joy Hwang
Video: André Heizer, Ivan Clow