One step into Lush, and it feels like you took a wrong step off Walnut Street into a Candy Land board game. Lush has honey-toned hardwood floors in an open, airy room full of fragrances nothing short of blossoming fruit gardens in the spring.
Every stop in this colorful store is like enjoying a sweet from a bakery. These sweet scented goodies are purely cosmetic beauty care products hand made from fresh fruits and vegetables. Lush is a London-based beauty store that opened at 1428 Walnut St., last September. This luxuriously decadent chain isn’t just another
beauty store.
“Our skin, hair care and cosmetic products
are all handmade, fresh organic fruit and veggies, 73 percent preservative-free and we use no animal body products, not even beeswax,” said Lauren Richardson, a sales representative at Lush. And with such a large amount of eye candy and animal test free products, even a PETA crazed junkie would have a hard time finding which sugared counter to begin their pampering.
For bath products, Lush offers their ever famous shower jellies. Although Jell-O look-a-likes they are, you actually cut them into segments and use them like a shower gel, only in solid form.
Lush’s “Party On” lemon lime-colored shower jelly is perfect for the average college student in need of a hangover cure. Ingredients include fresh mint, rosemary and lime and are advertised to “Rev you up for nights out on the town and to even help you get to work in the morning.” Priced at $10.70 for seven ounces, it may be wise to take up stock.
Most alluring about Lush’s abundance of treats is a lack of the cosmetic world’s most popular trick – not really doing what the product promises.
“Our products have all natural ingredients,
specifically designed to satisfy different customers’ needs,” said Lush sales representative Sarah Evancho. Just as important as bath products are hair products. And most intriguing are Lush’s Little Debbie Treat Imposter shampoo bars. Colored in bright pinks, blues and corals
these are an orgasm for the eye that would put even an Herbal Essence commercial to shame.
“This is my favorite product,” said Richardson of the shampoo bars. “These are better than liquid soap because you actually get 60 to 80 washes out of one bar. You just rub the bar onto wet hair and rinse.”
Preservative-free, and costing $9 for 750 millimeters, Lush sells shampoo bars for people who shower with soft or hard water, as well as a detangling bar called Karma Komba with orange oil, lemon grass and pine oil. Although Lush goods are all inedible, you can still apply plenty products to your face and lips. Richardson said their facemask “brazened honey” returns to Lush’s United Kingdom roots.
“It received its name from the British
term brazen hussy, meaning a person of questionable morals, because it’s a facemask that you apply when you are ashamed of what you’ve done to your skin,” she said. The product is purely a mask for someone who goes out too much and misbehaves.
“Brazened honey is perfect for detoxifying
and rejuvenation with ingredients such as rosemary which encourages circulation and helps flush out toxins, sage which the Greeks used to cleanse infected skin and juniper berry for stimulation,” Richardson said.
With hair, bath and skin products of vivid colors, natural ingredients and talented decoration, it’s a blessing Lush skipped over the pond to Philadelphia.
Ron Blair can be reached at ronald.blair@temple.edu.
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