Lush

If a long, fragrant soak is your idea of a reset, Lush bath bombs earn their keep. The appeal is in the experience and the formulas: Lush products are 100% vegetarian, 95% are vegan, and they lean on fruits and vegetables like grapefruit juice, vanilla beans, aloe vera and avocado butter rather than filler. Treat them as an occasional ritual rather than an everyday default and they feel like very good value.

Lush built its following on a clear ethical stance and a sensory, theatrical retail experience rather than advertising. The company follows a no-advertising policy, spending nothing on TV campaigns or celebrity endorsements and instead relying heavily on user-generated content and in-store moments. That authenticity, paired with handmade, fresh-ingredient products, is what keeps people loyal.

The two are closely entwined in history. Lush co-founders Mark Constantine and Liz Weir supplied Anita Roddick's Body Shop from 1977 and became its biggest supplier, until the Body Shop bought them out for £6 million for the manufacturing rights and a non-competition agreement that ran until 1994. Once free of it, they opened the first Lush shop, so Lush is in a real sense the brand that grew out of that relationship.

Yes. Lush does not buy from companies that carry out, fund or commission animal testing, and it tests its products on human volunteers instead. In the 1980s its founders worked with Cruelty Free International to help develop an ethical testing standard for cosmetics, and its anti-testing stance is firm enough that there are some countries where Lush refuses to sell. This is core to the brand rather than a marketing afterthought.

Lush is best known for its colourful, fizzing bath bombs, but the range is broad: creams, soaps, shampoos, shower gels, lotions, moisturisers, scrubs and masks for face and hair. A signature thread throughout is fresh, recognisable ingredients and a focus on limited packaging or package-free products. The handmade, fresh-from-the-kitchen feel is the through-line.

Lush Ltd. is a British cosmetics retailer headquartered in Poole, England, founded in 1994 by trichologist Mark Constantine, his wife Mo Constantine and five other founders. The first shop opened in 1995 on Poole's High Street, making cosmetics from freshly purchased fruits and vegetables. That kitchen-led origin still shapes how the brand makes and sells today.

The name was chosen through a customer competition run in the store's newsletter. It is a fitting choice for a brand built on fresh, generous, fruit-and-vegetable-rich formulas. The democratic, customer-led naming also sits neatly with Lush's wider community-first ethos.

Not quite all, but most. Lush products are 100% vegetarian and 95% are also vegan; some contain honey and/or beeswax. Eggs were removed from products in early 2019 and replaced with aquafaba, and lanolin was removed from all formulas in 2023. If strict veganism matters to you, it is worth checking the individual product.

Reducing waste is central to how Lush designs its range, so it focuses on limited packaging or package-free products wherever possible. This is part of a broader environmental stance that has included campaigning since 2017 against palm oil production linked to orangutan habitat destruction in Sumatra. The naked, unwrapped approach is a deliberate ethical choice.

Heavily. Lush became the first multinational high-street retailer to secure a Fair Tax Mark in 2015, and in 2024 it announced it had raised £100 million in charitable giving since 2007. It has also run campaigns and product lines tied to causes, from Australian bushfire wildlife relief to reforesting land bordering the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra. Activism is woven into the business rather than bolted on.

Yes, its activism has occasionally drawn criticism. In 2018 its #Spycops campaign, highlighting abuses by undercover police officers in the UK, was criticised for a broad-brush approach and was briefly suspended for staff safety before resuming. Lush has framed such campaigns as targeting specific issues rather than people, which is consistent with its long history of taking public stances.