Perfumes have gone through a lot of change in recent years at Lush. The initial spectacle of Liverpool's expansive Perfume Library in 2019 brought a wave of excitement to fragrance; when combined with the anchor-exclusive black labels and the white labels available nationwide, it meant that over 60 different Lush perfumes were accessible in the UK for a period of time, and that didn't even take body sprays into account. However, much like the celebratory Harajuku bath bomb range, this maverick move of reintroducing 30 forgotten fragrances went as quickly as it came, and between 2019 and 2022, what was once an apothecary of curiosities was transformed into a turnstile-admittance graveyard for perfumes leaving the core range, with the obscurities being condemned to, well, obscurity. I'm sure the pandemic is at least partially to blame for this, but it doesn't change the fact that the intention of the Perfume Library has been discarded, and the landscape of Lush's perfumes has been left looking rather stale.
Since spring 2022 though, where Love, 1000 Kisses Deep and Ginger were promoted/demoted (depending on your perspective) from white label to gold status and Keep It Fluffy was inducted alongside them into the Perfume Library, very little has changed. There have been some nominal seasonal movement in both fine fragrance and body sprays, but no AYR discontinuations since the last bottles of Lord Of Goathorn were finally snapped up from the website mid-2022. For a perfume lover like myself, this is perhaps the biggest reason I've become a bit jaded with the current selection - it's become stagnant. But what is important to remember is that not all changes are so black and white (or gold for that matter!), and that Lush's strategy has been a lot more lateral of late.
You see, Lush's perfume department isn't just perfume. It isn't even just perfume and body sprays. The definition extends to candles and wax melts, and after trialling Snow Fairy-scented candles and melts for Winter 2021 and 2022 respectively, both these subcategories of product have become permanent fixtures to stores and, by extension, the fragrance range. Basically, rather than expanding the variety of scents available, the focus has been on expanding the ways in which we can access them.
This shift is definitely a wave that Lush have been riding for a few years. When it became clear that Sleepy shower gel was a hit one Christmas, they capitalised on its popularity and continue to do so to this day - it's the only scent that currently has both a melt and a candle, as well as the matching Twilight body spray. More recently, other scent families are following suit - Rose Jam, Avobath and Karma have all had new additions, either permanent or temporary, and I can see Sticky Dates and, of all things, Grass, going a similar way, to appeal to the more niche markets. And of course, we can predict that Lord Of Misrule and Snow Fairy will get the same annual treatment indefinitely.
The only entirely new scent to come out of all this home fragrance malarky is Va-Va-Voom, a strawberry and jasmine melt, which I don't see ever working as a fine fragrance, as it doesn't have enough depth to it. With the exception of Karma, all of the most recent additions to perfume did not start life as a designated perfume. Granted, Lush's ECs are all made in house by the perfume department, so it's all created in the same place, but so many of Lush's perfumes were designed as such, and this seems to be becoming an archaic practise. As more and more lines of scent families saturate the entirety of the store, the light of the Perfume Library gets dimmer and dimmer. I fear for scents like The Smell Of Freedom and Superworldunknown, and even white labels like Breath Of God, that don't have those lateral connections to elsewhere in the shop. Even with these outward links, it doesn't guarantee the safety of a cult perfume that's expensive to make - just look at Salarium.
So that's how things are looking right now. Not necessarily bleak, but the real perfume nerds among us are treading water and should probably be conserving their energy to do so for a while. It could be a long time before what feels like a truly progressive change, as I'm sure there'll be a lot more reinforcement of existing popular smells to come first. That said, it's definitely worth keeping an eye on those gold labels, and maybe some white too; low sales thanks to focus being pulled by candles and melts could easily lead to withdrawal of even more cult classic scents. But if you're anything like me, you'll have back-ups of your favourites in storage, ready to outlast the supplies of the shops!
Friday, 10 March 2023
The State of Perfumes at Lush - Spring 2023
Monday, 20 February 2023
Forming A Perfume Identity - Pt.1: Catching The Bug
Well, I suppose I should start by saying that I don't predict much in the way of coherence or formula when it comes to posting here. Consider it a gathering space for a multitude of thought trains concerning Lush's encyclopaedia of fragrances, both past and present. I have vague ideas for a couple of recurring 'series', but asides from that, it'll be kind of messy. You shouldn't expect a logical order or timely pacing - I want this to be a sketchbook rather than a gallery exhibition.
With this in mind, I'm going to start not from the beginning. I'm starting, I guess, from the moment where my mind was expanded to what perfume could be, and where my interest really ignited.
In 2013, I was a burgeoning Lushie. I wouldn't get into the full hair and skincare shebang until post-recruitment to the company, but I had interest in the more scent-oriented aspects, such as bath, shower and, of course, perfume. However, I'd been yet to venture beyond the baby steps of solid perfumes, and once I'd acquired all the ones that piqued my interest, I'd unconsciously decided that my small but discerning collection of these was complete.
When Volume 2 hit the shops, they weren't additions to the old perfume range, but replacements for it. Of course, the Islington Gorilla Perfume store and a handful of repackaged 'Greatest Hits' were in the pipeline, so the actual scents weren't yet gone for good, but every single one of the solids that I'd curated for myself had now been removed from sale. Which leads onto another change: the formatting. No solid iterations, and no uniform black atomisers with white scrawl any more. Instead, the perfumes took on a more luxurious (yet concurrently artisanal) guise, each decanted into clear glass bottles of varying size and shape and brought to life with bold yet intricate coloured labels, giving each scent a distinct personality.
Personality had always been a strength of the Constantines' creations and, in my eyes at least, is what sets Lush's perfumes apart from the rest of the market to this day. Where they'd always been deft at pairing an aroma with the perfect name, there was now visual iconography bespoke to each one, really helping to immerse the wearer into the story of the perfume. Which, let's face it, tended to have a bit more depth and consideration than your average Calvin Klein or whatever. Combine this with beautiful wooden hinged cabinets for presentation, comic-like panels to illustrate each scent and the decision to reject spritzing entirely in favour of droppers and splash bottles, and it's clear that Volume 2 was more than just a second release; it was a radical reinvention.
So when I walked into my regular Lush and discovered this apothecary of new curiosities, I was immediately far more invested; they felt truly next level, like something elite and covetable, commodities to treasure and pride. Smelling them out of the tester bottles (which is a lot easier to do without a spray nozzle), I realised that these were nothing like the bright, all-star scents I'd come to associate with Lush - they were murkier, less forgiving, and very grounding. Even the lightness and fizziness of Sun and Euphoria felt mature when thinking back to the likes of Karma and Vanillary. But, as I've alluded to already, scent was only half the picture with these new, visually profiled perfumes, and my eyes were attracted to the labels of darker, more potent concoctions; The Voice Of Reason, Devil's Nightcap, The Bug.
At the time, 1984 was one of the few books I'd read, and the concept of a 'protest perfume' in a modern, surveillance-heavy society, along with the creepy, enigmatic sticker graphic and the rich, bourbon-coloured liquid really spoke to me. I felt as if I already knew what it smelled like. And when I got round to the purple-labelled dropper bottle, and the searing, metallic, boozy, dusty, underground, dystopian push and pull of the scent hit me, it was like I'd found a missing puzzle piece. This perfume just made so much sense in my mind. It seemed to fit with who I was and who I wanted to be and somehow personified a certain nuanced common theme of my own interests that I couldn't quite put into words. I was with a friend at the time, and she hated it. But that was irrelevant, because I'd just found a real life substance that was like an impossible, fictional potion to me.
This, I think, was the turning point for me. I might not have consciously thought it, but looking back, this was where I realised that perfume can be about more than merely selecting a lovely scent. There is a multitude of other factors worth considering, and though I'd been able to make basic associations before ('Dirty is fresh' or 'Dear John is warm'), The Bug wasn't so easily categorised, and I'd failed to contemplate how rewarding such a complex and challenging scent could be. Even after smelling something so disruptive, purchasing the smallest sized bottle and dabbing it on my skin, I don't think I overtly realised that I was finding not just satisfaction but a sense of self in what was clearly a very niche fragrance until quite a long time after.