#StrippedBackSkincare: Learning and Luxury with LUSH

LUSH is a skincare brand that is known and loved for its environmentally friendly yet delightfully indulgent beauty products. If you have ever stepped into one of their stores, you’ll know it smells like some kind of magical, flowery sweet-shop in there – and looks like one, too. The LUSH store at Cavendish held an evening Masterclass to showcase their latest products, the zero-packaging Naked range, and to raise awareness of the importance of reducing our plastic waste.

It was an intimate but lively event with just twenty guests, which began with a short introductory talk and plenty of vegetarian snacks. To my surprise, the workshop began with a question: “How many plastic bottles do you have sitting in just your bathroom right now?” After a moment’s hesitation, a few people gave their estimates: “Three”, “Five”, “…Ten?”. This started a discussion around the number of plastic-packaged items we all use on a regular basis, and what we can do to decrease that number.

Image by Sasha Broom

As consumers, we are certainly more aware than ever about the harms of plastics in the environment. Movements such as those banning straws and plastic shopping bags have done important work to raise awareness about the excess of single-use plastics in landfills and oceans – but we also need to consider the packaging that our everyday necessities and occasional luxuries come in. By not only recycling, but by minimising our intake of packaged goods, each of us could be making a huge reduction in our waste impact.

Image by Sasha Broom  

Lush bath bombs are another fun and packaging-free product.

While many people have heard of zero-packaging shampoo bars, it takes a little more imagination to conceive of, for example, a reusable facial wipe made of cannellini beans and seaweed. Conventional makeup removal and facial wipes cause long-lasting devastating to the environment due to their plastic composition, which causes them to clog up the water systems that they end up in – not only pipes, but rivers and beaches, too. The product inventors at LUSH took on the project of creating something just as convenient as a cleansing wipe, but which is kinder to the planet as well as our skin. Thus, the gently exfoliating 7 To 3 reusable facial wipe was born: made with ground cannellini, dove orchid, moisturising carrageenan, and ylang ylang.

Every product in the new range has sensitively selected, nourishing ingredients such as these, along with the aim to be not just easy and fun to use, but easy on the environment as well.

All of these Naked products are not only paraben and packaging free, but also completely vegan and biodegradable. The reusable wipes, solid oil cleansers and moisturizer bars are made using alternative ingredients to those we usually find in beauty stores – including some that have never been used in LUSH products before. For example, in the Naked cleansing balm Gritty Politti, crushed coconut shell is used, rather than plastic microbeads, as a natural exfoliator.

The products themselves are also naturally self-preserving. That means there’s no need for either harmful synthetic preservatives or expensive, wasteful packaging. Instead, the ingredients themselves protect the cleanser or wash from bacteria, such as the banana peel tincture in the Banana Skin facial oil with its antifungal properties.

After the talk, which explained some of these key aspects to the range, came the fun part: product demo time! We were invited to walk around to different stations set up around the store so that we could chat to a consultant and have them take us through how to use the ten individual products. I was so excited to try out the curious-looking Jade Roller cleanser (made with South African sourced Marula oil) and the gloriously floral-scented Rose Argan moisturizer bar, which smells delicious, as well as the adorable Sleepy Face cleanser. Each guest was given an arm massage from a consultant, to rub the cleanser in, and a moisturizer of our choice so that we could experience the full potential of the products. I was left feeling pampered and relaxed, surrounded by the beautifully light scent of the ingredients on my skin.  

The added benefit of the Naked range is that it is just as easy to use as any bottled beauty products: all you need to do is warm it in your hand or a little warm water before rubbing as much as you desire into your skin. If you are using one of the oil cleansers, you simply rinse or wipe off before rubbing in your moisturiser.

Image by Sasha Broom

All in all, I came away from the evening feeling not only excited about the incredible products I had just tried, but also freshly motivated to reduce my consumption of overly-packaged products, assured by the knowledge that there are cosmetic companies making positive changes.

The Naked range is now available both in LUSH stores and online. If you want to know more about the products, have a look at the LUSH South Africa website, Facebook page, or their Instagram along with the hashtags #StrippedBackSkincare and #LUSHNaked. All of these platforms are full of information about the ingredients used and how they’re sourced, including videos on how some of the products are made. If you want to join in for the next Masterclass, simply pop into one of the stores and get your name down on their mailing list. You’ll definitely see me there.