Stephaney 'Jane' Oberon
Free of pesticides, synthetics, and chemicals, JANE’s skin care and perfumes are inspired by nature and old-world apothecaries. The Sullivan’s Island-based line uses local plants such as jasmine, lavender, rosemary, resins, and roses whenever possible. Each serum, cleanser, facial mist, body balm, salve, and perfume is “small batch, hand-blended with love,” says owner and chief mixologist Stephaney ‘Jane’ Oberon.
When local herbs are not available, only the “highest quality oils” from small producers and cooperatives from around the world are used. Many of the exotic oils have been local secrets in far-flung corners of the world for centuries but have rarely been used in products in the United States. Oberon believes many of the ingredients are pioneering in the skin care industry.
The pathway leading to Oberon’s Sullivan’s Island cottage is wild and unmanicured. Jasmine and wisteria climb freely along the backyard screened porch that runs the length of the house. Her organic journey to this home, this island, and this career began in her hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, where she owned a fitness studio. At age 20, she was diagnosed with a degenerative disk disease. Doctors handed her a sheet of exercises to help make her body stronger. They told her she might be in a wheelchair by age 30. “No way,” said Oberon.
She began getting regular chiropractic treatments and doing strength training, which she parlayed into her own low-impact aerobics studio. While taking continuing education credits as a fitness instructor in New Orleans, a serendipitous flyer on the ground got her attention. It was an advertisement for training for a nonimpact combination mind/body/spirit fitness workout class called neuromuscular integrative action. She became a black belt, the highest level of NIA training, and presented sessions around the world for 17 years.
Sullivan’s Island was always home in between her worldly travels, other than a brief stint in Manhattan. The yin of the sea drew her back to Sullivan’s Island. “The city has always seemed masculine to me, whereas the sea is more feminine,” mused Oberon, in her multipurpose room that is a living room/dance studio/apothecary/art studio/laundry room.
Herbal Healer
Settled back into Island life, indulging in quiet, starlit, nighttime bike rides and the magic that lies behind the picket fences that she missed while in New York City, she refocused her creative curative energies on using natural herbs to help people with skin issues. “While other girls were reading Nancy Drew, I was reading books about herbal remedies,” she said. “Aromatic applications were always fascinating to me.” As a teenager, she suffered from painful acne and unbalanced skin that went from oily to extremely dry. The antibiotics prescribed for her did nothing to help.
Though partially self-trained in herbal applications, she also took workshops in Asheville at the Aromatic Institute. Around that time, Oberon’s sister, Shawna Robinson, who was among the first female NASCAR drivers, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the chemotherapy wreaked havoc on her skin. She wanted to find a way to help them both. And so the JANE skin care line was created in 2015. She still conducts monthly NIA dance classes in her studio at the Academy of Dance Arts in Mount Pleasant and by Zoom and lives within a body that is pain-free in spite of her doctor’s original dire warning.
When she’s not sharing knowledge from her journey of self-healing, Oberon can usually be found creating something in her studio, with the sweet-smelling myrtle grove at the back door softly diffusing the sounds of the ocean. Last year, she performed in Ode to the Sea at the Battery Gadsen Cultural Center, a tribute to the sea and the beloved Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
Oberon has been a part of the island’s community since 1997 and has kept a diary through the years that she is currently working on turning into a book. “I swore if they ever closed Bert’s Bar [closed in 2009] I would leave here. It was such a fun community gathering for locals and, in its own way, the heartbeat of the island. The music and dance were always so fun. But it closed, and I stayed,” she says. “Then I swore if they ever closed Atlanticville [closed in 2015], I would leave. I loved those Sunday brunches under the flapping tarp roof, sweat dripping down my skin while Dori played the flamenco guitar and the confederate jasmine vines climbed up the walls and the stairs. It was like dining inside a perfume bottle. But it, too, closed, and I stayed.”
“I think that if I were anywhere else, I would just be wondering if the wisteria was blooming on Sullivan’s.
- Stephaney 'Jane' Oberon
