Lush: helping you look and feel good, naturally

Its celebrity fan list reads like the Cannes guest list. Halle Berry, Jessica Alba and Laura Prepon are fans of the Dream Cream Body Moisturiser; Angelina Jolie loves the Ultra Bland Facial Cleanser, while Kylie Minogue can't have enough of its bath bombs.

And that's not hard to believe. Given our current love for all things natural in beauty, Lush's 16-year-old history of making skin and hair products packed with herbs, fruits, nuts, flowers and essential oils has fetched its share of fans.

The brand tirelessly highlights its modus operandi for manufacturing its products - employees gleefully toiling away in big kitchens, stirring pots and vats of delightfully fragranced lotions, soaps and creams. Yes, all products are handmande. And the labels on the jars tell you just who made the product.

As you enter a Lush shop (of which there are 712 in the world, and three in Dubai), you get an immediate feeling of having entered a cosmetic deli. Multi-coloured orbs, bright, striated blocks of soaps and cabinets displaying fresh face masks in black cupcake jars... it's a delicious feeling if fresh skincare products get you going the way fresh food goodies do. The appeal of tactility was never underestimated by Lush; you can touch, feel and smell the soaps or creams without being hampered by packaging. It sells 67 per cent of its produce in solid formulations.

Fresh, handmade ingredients

"Since we don't use synthetic preservatives, our products need to reach the customer while they are still fresh and as a result no product in any of the stores can be more than six months old," says Rowena Bird, Lush Co-founder and Product Inventor.

"Why wouldn't you want to put something on your face when you know it's natural? After all, when you're picking a natural product with real strawberries, you already know what strawberries will do to your skin as against going for some unknown chemical formulation with elements whose side effects you're not aware of."

Of course, all of these fresh ingredients mean you need to be disciplined in your routine to use Lush. For example, the Bio fresh face masks that are displayed in chillers come with an expiry date of a week (in the refrigerator).

And there is no skimping on the portions. From fruit to flowers to herbs, raw materials are liberally spooned into each product. "You don't find many brands putting in so much of the actual raw material in their products and that's why our products work," Bird adds.

Some other tactics Lush uses are sweet, as they say. The solid massage oil uses your body heat to melt over your skin and that's a different sensation for those used to oils spilling out of bottles. The shampoos and conditioners, hair colour made with natural ingredients such as henna, solid soaps and a whole new range of perfume and deodorant bars are also solid formulations.

Solid evidence for saving on packaging

"We've spent years developing solid natural products without preservatives that work effectively. Being non-messy, these don't require excess packaging," says Bird. The brand is determinedly pursuing being outrageous about the way the products look and feel. "We are going all-out," she says. "A few years ago we had to worry about acceptance of our unusual-looking products. Now we know there's a huge demand for our products and don't need to worry about that. We just think innovation: how do we make a product solid, how do we make something long lasting without introducing any chemical ‘nasties?'"

In 2009, in the UK alone, Lush sold over 5.9 million ‘bare' (unpackaged or lightly wrapped) products and 200,000 of these items were shampoo bars, which amounts to avoiding 15 tonnes of plastic usage. Of course, there are also the black cupcake-like jars for the semi-fluid formulations but the company also recycles the plastic jars. "In the UK, if customers bring back five clean black jars, we give them a free face mask."

Bird is convinced that consumers of beauty products don't really care about the packaging. "They care about the magic potion that's inside.'

Sure, any Lush fan will tell you the products don't come cheap, despite the near lack of packaging. But Bird is happy to explain out why. "Our products are not cheap, but they give the customer value for money and once they see the difference in their skin and hair, they want to invest in this different product, which is ethically produced and is effective as well."

One of the main challenges at Lush is to constantly monitor the list of the ethical do's and don'ts to uphold the core values of the brand. "It is challenging because most of the world doesn't care about the ethics of animal testing and fair trade practices," says Bird.

"And since we go for organic ingredients wherever possible and never buy any raw material that's been tested on animals, we do hit a roadblock every now and then. But then that's also a push for product innovation: it gets us to think more creatively and outside the box. We say to ourselves things like, ‘OK, how do we create a natural hair gel now?'"

The answers - though not easy -are abundantly available in nature. For example, Bird says they discovered that they could work with natural seaweed, which also has some great healing properties and some resins for hair products. "And we managed fine."

For some ranges like the ones containing SPF the brand hasn't found a solution yet, Bird admits. "We would really like to do a big skincare range for SPF products but all the SPF raw material suppliers do animal testing and we need to find someone who doesn't," she says.

"When skincare is organic, cold pressed, fair trade - it may not be the cheapest but then that's more ethical as well as good for your skin. We try to reduce our carbon footprint with little steps." The one other thing Lush won't do is air freight its prducts. "We ship them."

Why go natural?

Chemicals generally found in today's skincare and cosmetics, believes Bird, can play a big role in making our skin ultra-sensitive. "The chemicals used in skincare and cosmetics are rightly called nasties as they are the leading cause behind acne, pimples, rashes and ultra-sensitive and reactive skin. For example, mineral oil is used as an ingredient in a lot of products and this is one chemical that can lead to redness in skin in a lot of people.

"If you've reacted to mineral oil, and you use mineral oil-based make up, you are aggravating your skin condition. Even products for babies contain such harsh chemicals nowadays."

It's important that people read the fine print and know what they are putting on their skin, says Bird. "A lot of it is also the fault of manufacturers as they don't want to put the ingredient information out there properly. It usually reads like Latin," she says.

Lush products are available at Lush shops in The Dubai Mall, Deira City Centre and Mercato Mall.