If you didn’t use body butter, were you even there for the ‘90s? It’s one of the many iconic products that made The Body Shop a high street phenomenon. Long before the scent of fresh, unpackaged products wafted down the high street drawing customers into Lush, the Body Shop was making waves with innovative formulations, quality natural ingredients and a bold vision to end animal testing. Back in the day, the founders of Lush ran a business providing R&D, manufacturing, training and campaigns support to The Body Shop and others. They created a back catalogue of products that found fame and fortune elsewhere.
Where it all began
It started with some samples that Body Shop founder Anita’s fledgling business received from Constantine & Weir: a small, Dorset-based company. Established by trichologist Mark Constantine (today Lush’s Co-Founder and CEO) and beautician Elizabeth Bennett (née Weir – also a Lush Co-Founder), this enterprising pair specialised in herbal beauty formulations and treatments, many of which were cooked up in Mark and Mo Constantine’s marital home. The henna shampoo they had sent Anita might have looked distinctly uncommercial, but Anita saw something in it. Impressed, she placed a large order, sparks flew, and a powerful partnership between The Body Shop and Constantine & Weir was born.
Many of the Body Shop’s most popular early products came from this creative collaboration of kindred spirits. It was also a partnership that helped to shape dynamic ethical policies and attracted staff and customers who believed that capitalism could be a force for good.
Ingredients for effects
Lush Co-Founder and Product Inventor Helen Ambrosen has many treasured memories of friendships and products forged from this happy, hectic time. “Body butters really became a genre!” she recalls. “Back in the day, they were invented by the Lush co-founders and our colleague Cosmetic Scientist Stan Krysztal but found a home elsewhere. So, it’s fitting that they are coming back to where they started.
“Natural ingredients weren't a focus till this point and this was the start of them being used to give great effects. My record for making Cocoa Butter hand and body lotion was one tonne in one day – all in Mark and Mo’s kitchen. Karl [Bygrave – once a Product Compounder and now a Lush Co-Founder and Director] once fell in a 100kg vat of it.”
Mostly, another old favourite being reinvented (and renamed) by Lush, also has a place in Helen’s heart. “Mostly Men was a range The Body Shop did,” she remembers. “Mark was sitting in the audience at the presentation of the packaging – with no product in it! Then he realised he was supposed to be doing the product, so he came back, and we did it – fast!”
Pastures new
Despite their wild success, The Body Shop and Constantine & Weir ultimately parted ways and went on to forge different paths. Mark and colleagues new and old went on to learn some tough business lessons with the rise and demise of their mail-order company Cosmetics To Go, founded in 1988. It was an incredibly creative and then painful six years, but they ultimately took these learnings (and the values that had united them through thick and thin) into Lush. Lush’s ‘We Believe’ statement was written in the aftershock: a number of binding principles that guide the business directors today as they did then.
In 2006, a year before she passed away, Anita and the other shareholders sold The Body Shop to L'Oréal. It was a move that many customers saw as a betrayal of the principles that the business had championed. The brand never recovered its former glory and, with profits down, L'Oréal sold The Body Shop to Natura in 2017. A change of ownership ultimately couldn't revive the heart and soul and quality of the brand once so loved by so many.
After the painful learnings of Cosmetics To Go, the Lush Co-Founders, Mark and Mo Constantine, Elizabeth Bennett, Helen Ambrosen, Rowena Bird, Paul Greeves and Karl Bygrave were content to let the quality of the ingredients speak for themselves. Gone was the frivolous packaging; in its place, simple pots, naked products, and signage written in chalk. The business became known for its unique delicatessen style: fresh face masks served on ice, soaps cut to order like cheeses, and market stall stacks of colourful bath products. Shop windows gave space to serious campaigns on social, environmental and animal rights issues, attracting passionate staff and customers. Today, the business continues to swim against the tide: rejecting harmful social media platforms and industry trends, pioneering naked and self-preserving products and still fighting animal testing.
Thanks for the memories
In 2024, when news broke that The Body Shop had entered into administration after another change of hands, it stirred up all kinds of feelings for the Lush co-founders. While the working relationship was over several companies ago, the two businesses shared history, and often even ingredient suppliers. Those who still remember making creams for Anita in Mark and Mo’s shed wanted to revisit those earlier formulas: the ones that got away. The Lush Version is a fresh take on old friends and Body Shop classics: a tribute to the hippy path we forged decades ago when Anita gave our very first formulas a chance.
Written by Milly Ahlquist
