Lily Grace is the name of Cyndi Clark’s granddaughter. Like all babies, she has beautiful skin and makes a good mascot for a skin care store–a framed six-by-nine-inch photo of the luminous-skinned toddler is parked behind the counter.

Not only is the store named for Lily Grace, the baby is also the reason Clark opened her own business. After years of commuting around the country as a vice president then as a consultant for a series of skin care and cosmetics companies, Clark says, “I want to have the Sunday dinner [with my granddaughter] and go to piano recitals, no matter how bad they are.” She signed a five-year lease in the Main Street space that was formerly Suwanee Springs and is on a mission to make Ann Arbor pay attention to its skin. Take-away message: SPF. Now.

“I love makeup,” says Clark, surely one of Ann Arbor’s less-heard utterances, especially from a vegetarian, which Clark and her husband, Dave, are. Ann Arbor, she gently agrees, is not really big on cosmetics and skin care.

Clark is. Twenty-two years ago, she says, she got a job at a Macy’s Clinique counter and “caught the bug. From Macy’s we moved to Paris for two years,” courtesy of her husband’s job as an executive at Amcor, a high-tech packaging company. There she learned that Parisians take skin and body care more seriously than Americans do. “It’s very important. That’s how you feel pretty: by feeling healthy and feeling good every day,” says Clark. After Paris came her favorite job, at Jacobson’s, supervising all the stores’ cosmetics departments.

The skin care world has its own celebrities, and Clark knows many of them. In early December her store was dotted with congratulatory bouquets from old friends in the business, and makeup artist Trish McEvoy was about to fly in for a workshop to do makeovers.

With all her connections, Clark had a hard time choosing her brands. She wanted to offer a range from scientifically formulated “spa lines like Natura Bisse all the way to pure natural brands like Tata Harper, who hand-mixes her own cosmetics on her farm.” She also wanted to bring smaller, artisanal brands to Ann Arbor, like Tammy Fender (another earthy-crunchy brand: “aromatherapy, crystal therapy, and color therapy, synergized with natural ingredients”). She carries specialty products for men, like Billy Jealousy. And to round things out, she has stocked a small section of home products, like soaps, scented candles, and room diffusers. Nest-brand votive candles, in flavors like bamboo or bourbon, sell for $16.

Lily Grace, 306 S. Main, 761-9350. Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.