Some Of The Best Things You Can Buy In A Lush
Let me first just say that this isn’t a sponsored post or an advert, although full disclosure I did once do an event for the Lush Book Club, and the entire time I was there I kept on saying ‘this is great, because I really do love Lush’, and they kept on responding with ‘lovely, thanks’. It physically pained me to think that Lush maybe thought I was being insincere, and that this was just something I said to every brand-sponsored book club, of which there are many. So I kept on telling them the reasons I loved Lush, which I will repeat to you, now:
the stuff is good
i feel happy when I’m in a Lush, and yes, I know that the staff members are often extremely chatty and sincere, and I know not everyone is up for that. But would you rather mess around and waste half an hour in a Space NK? I’ve thought about it for a long time and I’ve decided that I hate messing around in a Space NK. Looking at rounds of that Sol de Janeiro Bum Bum cream gives me depression. Not just the weird promises it makes (‘visibly tightening') but the idea that someone would believe the promise is a horrible mindset to exist in
whenever I’m in Cork, I like to take my niece for a sushi date where we both talk about our careers (she’s an aspiring actress, struggling madly against my sister, who rightly believes that a child should not be allowed to be a working actress) and then afterwards we go to Lush. We’ve been doing this for years, graduating slowly from bath bombs to scented body lotion to coloured mascara. The staff are always extremely nice to us, and I like how they take both of our shopping experiences seriously despite me being obviously the one with the money. The first time we came home from one of these dates, my sister asked her how it was and Robin’s eyes were full of stars. “A gay man washed my hands,” she said, like it was the best thing that had ever happened to her. And maybe it was!
On these trips I always notice how there are no photographs in a Lush, just colours and drawings of the staff members who made it for you. And I think, yes, this is how I want my niece to experience beauty marketing. This is how I want to experience beauty marketing. Not with photographs of how I should look but descriptors of how I should feel.
Finally, if you travel a lot for work, which I do, you will frequently have an afternoon where you have no plans, and no one to speak to, and find yourself very near despair. You can almost always go to a Lush and ask them for a sample of interesting conditioner. It won’t fix everything, but your hair will smell a bit different, which is almost as good.
Now! On with the list. I’m not actually that arsed about baths and my skincare is mostly The Ordinary so most of this is hair and body stuff.
My friend Sarah Griffin turned me onto this when we had a spa weekend last winter and our hair was in that permanent moist/frazzled state you get when you’re talking fifty steam baths a day. Now I use it every time I wash my hair, in addition to regular conditioner. It smells, like almost everything else on this list, like a bakery. I only ever want to smell like a bakery. Specifically: like a bakery that you become obsessed with, and feel very original for being obsessed with, and then when you attempt to befriend the proprietor you find out she came up under Ottolenghi and actually has a cookbook of her own. This sours the friendship somewhat but not for any reason you can really put your finger on. Like, does everyone need to have a publishing empire in order to sell sourdough? Is that where we’re at?
Picture this: the same bakery from before, the one you feel complicated about because you misunderstood the fame and status of the owner. They just hired a real piece of shit barista who is always banging the silver espresso grinder really loudly. Why did she hire him, your sort-of friend, when he’s so rude to everybody? The answer becomes clear when you realise: they are fucking. This is what the bakery smells like, after they’ve fucked.
People talk a lot about Mob Wives, but you hear less about Mob Daughters. Mob Daughters are the firecracker, queer-coded, hyper-capable women who will inherit the business because the Mob Sons are all disappointments. It’s a no brainer. I’ve known a few Mob Daughters in my time and they all seem to wear Karma perfume. I lack the brains and talent to be a Mob Daughter so I do not wear Karma perfume, but I sometimes use Good Karma shower gel. It’s the only shower gel that lingers after you’ve put your clothes on, and I feel quick and masculine when I wear it, like I am going to burn down a restaurant for the insurance money, and never, ever get caught.
I feel like not everyone could get away with comparing their shampoo to a drug treatment facility, but Lush can, possibly because they’ve harvested so much good will with the no animal testing stuff etc etc. But the ‘rehab’ thing is fitting because I really do feel, when I use this shampoo, that I had a problem, and that I didn’t realise the extent of the problem until the shampoo gathered my friends and family into one room to tell me that I did. And now the shampoo is going to show me that the world can be bright and clean, without drugs, which i love, but must learn to do without.
Nothing much whimsical to say here except that this shampoo has salt crystals in it. When you have thick hair, as I do, you often run into the problem of a flat, greasy root with wild, puffy movement around the ears. You look a bit like a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, which shouldn’t be as traumatic to me as it evidently is. The salt crystals push your roots up, which I think is quite genius. I use the rehab shampoo first and then this.
For a long time I lived as you live, with one shower gel in my shower, and I used it until it was gone. I’m going to the gym a lot more lately which means I shower more, and once you get into the two-showers-a-day business, hygiene can be a real pain in the ass. You walk into the shower and you’re like: wait, wasn’t I just here? So I’m really starting to curate my shower experience. I have a big wicker basket of shower bits, and with it, I am a shower sommelier. Which scrub pairs well with which shower gel? What lotion? My life is small, and grows smaller! This rose jam is very femme, very sweet, very ‘i think i like this little life’ coded.
Posh Chocolate body wash
I don’t understand how this isn’t one hundred pounds a jar. So indulgent! So softening! I use this after a shower gel, maybe the rose jam or the karma one, and it feels amazing and saves you the hassle of a lotion afterwards.
You and the baker are back on friendly terms, and she’s invited you to Christmas drinks! Wow!
I have literally dozens of other Lush recommendations, but this was getting a bit long. If you would like to hear about them please let me know!
Your descriptions make me want to rethink the ‘no baked goods scents’ stance I’ve held since an unfortunate experience where the guy sitting behind me during a school assembly was trying to figure out why he kept catching whiffs of his mother’s homemade birthday cake, and repeatedly asked his seatmates ‘do you smell cake? I smell cake. Why does it smell like cake?” I realized it was me and my vanilla Body Shop lotion. This was in 1987. Maybe it’s time to give bakery scents another chance.
I feel like I need to read a novel about the baker now!