In Beverly, Alyssa Butler Changes How Burlington County Thinks About Skincare
Alyssa Butler, a licensed esthetician and owner of Beauty by Lyss Studios, poses in her suite on Cooper Street in Beverly. Photo by Milan Parker.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was produced as part of the South Jersey Emerging Journalists Project (SJEJP), an independent initiative dedicated to supporting content creators and emerging journalists from underserved communities across Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland, and Atlantic counties.
BY MILAN PARKER | South Jersey Emerging Journalists Project
BEVERLY — When Alyssa Butler first enrolled in beauty school at 18, she thought that she was signing up to do makeup.
“I really just thought it was makeup school,” Butler said with a laugh. “Then when I jumped into it, I was like, this is not makeup. It’s way deeper than that.”
Realizing that skin care is its own discipline — not simply a backdrop for beauty — is something she’s been passing on to her clients ever since.
Nearly a decade into her career, Butler runs her own esthetics practice, Beauty By Lyss Studios, out of a suite on Cooper Street in Beverly, and for many Black women in Burlington County, she’s filling a gap they didn’t even know existed until they stepped through her door.
“A lot of my clients always say they got on Google and typed in ‘black waxers’ or ‘black facials,’’ she tells Front Runner New Jersey. “And then I’ll be the first that pops up.”
It’s a small detail with much larger implications. Black estheticians in the area aren’t necessarily rare, Butler said, but visible ones are.
“Maybe they’re just not promoting it as much,” Butler said. “So, I think maybe I’m the closest.”
Visibility matters in a profession where Black practitioners make up only about 5 percent of licensed estheticians nationwide, making someone like Alyssa easy to find a rarity in itself.
Starting From Home
A Willingboro native, Butler received her esthetics license at Rosaries Beauty School in Voorhees in 2017, completing the full-time program in six months. She spent years working at a spa, imagining a future where she’d maybe mentor other estheticians, still under someone else’s roof.
But COVID introduced a possibility she hadn’t considered before.
“When COVID happened is when I really started my business, and it wasn’t even intentionally me starting my business,” she said. “I was really just taking family and friends at home because people still wanted to get their eyebrows done or do facials.”
Word spread the way it does in Burlington County: a client told a friend, a friend told a cousin, and before long, Butler had built a personal clientele rooted almost entirely in Willingboro and the surrounding area.
She eventually met Shakirra Howard, a local soapmaker and hairstylist who gave her space to see clients, then found her way to her current location on Cooper Street, a spot she’d actually heard about years earlier.
Beauty By Lyss Studios on Cooper Street in Beverly. Photo by Milan Parker.
“I feel like this was just meant for me to be here,” she said.
What’s Next for Beauty By Lyss Studios
Clients find their way to her suite for different reasons — extractions, waxing, chemical peels, customized facials — and from farther away than the surrounding area. One client flies in from California. Another makes the drive up from Maryland. A third makes Beverly a regular stop whenever she visits Florida.
“She’ll come here for like a day or two, but I’m always on her stop,” Butler said of her clients who travel from beyond South Jersey. “It just feels really good to be thought of even when you’re so far — that you could go to someone else, but you choose to be with me.”
Part of what keeps them coming back is what happens beyond the treatments themselves. Alyssa has made education a cornerstone of her practice. One treatment surprises her clients more than almost anything else: sunscreen.
“People think Black people don’t need sunscreen,” Butler said. “We do. We get sunburned. We get sun damage. We get aging rays. And you can get skin cancer as well.”
Alyssa Butler poses with some of her SkinScript products she uses on clients. Photo by Milan Parker.
Most clients, she said, don’t hear that until they’re already in her chair.
She recommends that they come every three to four weeks, and many do. She uses SkinScript, a professional-grade line not available in drugstores or retail, and sells products clients can take home between appointments. But even that, she said, doesn’t replace showing up.
“My skin feels much, much better ever since I started coming to you,” she recalls clients telling her. “They feel a difference.”
What’s Next for Beauty By Lyss Studios
Butler said she’s still not done with the Cooper Street space. There are still things she wants to do there. But she’s dreaming bigger, with hopes of having own storefront, her own small spa, and podcasting.
“I feel like I’m still not done here,” she said. “But eventually I will outgrow this.”
For now, and for the women in Burlington County and beyond who’ve been searching, she’s right here on Cooper Street.
Milan Parker is a contributing writer at Front Runner New Jersey as part of the South Jersey Emerging Journalist Project. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to music, shopping for vintage clothing, documenting her life through polaroid photography, and inline skating. She can be reached at milan.parker.sjejp@gmail.com
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