Beauty products with a heart

The Body Shop has always been known for its high-quality beauty products (everyone has a favorite; mine are the body butters, which The Body Shop pioneered, and the lip and cheek stain), but also for the unfailingly ethical way they’ve done business since 1976. They’re 100-percent cruelty-free, they champion Community Fair Trade and empower small communities worldwide, and they support worthy causes. Dame Anita Roddick’s brainchild was never your average beauty store.

They wrapped all of that up in their new beauty movement — three little words that perfectly encompass everything The Body Shop stands for: Beauty With Heart. “We know that our brand delivers more than beauty; our products truly contain heart as well. Today, we’re looking to a future where our vision of beauty can be experienced by new generations for whom it is all about looking good, feeling good, and doing good, too,” says Sophie Gasperment, The Body Shop’s executive chairman.

It’s a powerful message to send in a time when we’re bombarded with superficiality from all sides, and few could send it better than The Body Shop’s new brand advocate — supermodel and activist Lily Cole. “I have long been an advocate of the potential of using business and consumer power to cause positive change,” says Cole.

The Body Shop has created change in her life, too. “The fact that The Body Shop was selling henna when I was growing up definitely suggested that red hair was cool — before I was wise enough to recognize that myself!” shares Cole. “There is a natural quality to The Body Shop approach which places its emphasis on enhancing, rather than masking people’s faces.”

Look good

We traveled halfway across the world (to London!), but the journey only truly began in the Old Sorting Office near Oxford Street, where an experiential tour of The Body Shop was held for media from all over the globe. If you’re the kind of shopper who loves touching everything, trying all the colors, and really learning all there is to know about a product (in other words, if you can spend an entire day on a department store’s beauty floor going from counter to counter), the Look Good room would be heaven. We got to experience every single skincare and makeup range The Body Shop had to offer — from favorites like the Tea Tree Oil and the Honey Bronze line, to new stuff like the Shimmer Cubes (Coming soon! They come pre-packaged, but we lucky ones got to create our own). More than just trying products from the Vitamin C, Aloe, and Extra Virgin Minerals ranges, to name a few, we also learned what ingredients were used, where they came from, and what made them so effective. It was fun, but educational; everything we used to wish school would be like. And, we left the room looking even prettier.

Feel good

Any obsessive beauty nut knows that beauty shopping is a tactile thing. A purchase so heavily depends on how a product feels on your skin, and everyone loves the bottle labeled Tester. In the Feel Good room, the “travelers” took a quick quiz to determine what their scent was (of The Body Shop’s signatures, like Moringa, Shea, Olive, and Satsuma), and then were led to that station to get a luxurious hand massage using all of the body products from the line. With glasses of spiked hot chocolate to keep us warm in London’s post-winter weather, nothing could have felt better.

Do good

The last stop on our journey was the Do Good room, where we were introduced to The Body Shop’s five Values: Defend Human Rights, Activate Self Esteem, Support Community Fair Trade, Protect the Planet, and Against Animal Testing.

These days, most of us ask where our products came from. Who made them? Where’d they get the ingredients? Do they test on animals? We’re slowly but surely becoming responsible consumers, and the beauty industry will be all the better for it, but it’s interesting to note that The Body Shop was asking those questions decades ago. They’re responsible, to the point that they have even discontinued fan favorite products in the past because the key ingredients used to create them were no longer sustainable. And they didn’t just ask questions, they took action, establishing community fair trade and sourcing responsibly, making sure that the benefit isn’t only to The Body Shop and its consumers, but to the small communities all over the world who produce the ingredients that are used to make their products.

Today, they source products and ingredients from countries like Nepal, Ghana, Namibia, Paraguay, India, Ethiopia, and Samoa, just to name a few, and the local communities they work with have benefited greatly. For instance, what was once a small Nepalese paper production company made up of 14 employees now provides six percent of Nepal’s trade with the United Kingdom. (With all our natural resources, I’m hoping the Philippines soon makes its way into their Community Fair Trade shortlist!)

Feel the pulse

You won’t have to fly to London to get the same experience — although that yummy rum-spiked hot chocolate won’t be there, unfortunately — because Beauty With Heart is coming to Manila, in the form of The Body Shop’s Pulse boutiques, which are opening this May. Shopping at The Body Shop will be an even more immersive experience. Product displays will show you information about the Community Fair Trade ingredients so you know where your money is going. Testers will be more prominently displayed so you can really feel the products. There will be a cute Top 10 display of the bestselling Body Shop products (tailored per region; it’ll be different in every country!), and specially trained makeup artists and skincare experts will be there to answer your every burning beauty question, so you, too, can look good, feel good, and do good.