Monday 11 August 2008

The Lush Enigma

I posted some while back, on t'other blog, on the mysterious spread of 'Cornish pasty' outlets across the land - doubly mysterious as nobody ever seemed to buy the product (apart from the odd sociopath with the aim of stinking out a railway/Tube carriage). Another retail presence I'm finding equally baffling is that of an apparently wildly successful chain called Lush, which sells huge, misshapen hunks of garishly coloured, foul-smelling soaps, whose emanations scent the high street air in a most unpleasant fashion (yes, worse than Body Shop). I have seen people going in and out of these shops without apparent respiratory distress, and even buying stuff - heaven knows what for. I suspect Lush products exist largely to serve the purpose of unwanted gifts (an essential category in British life) - to sit around in other people's bathrooms, unfeasibly shaped and constituted, useless and unusable, gathering dust, fouling the air, awaiting the day when, with a faint disgusted sigh, they are thrown out.

4 comments:

  1. The pong from the lush emporium in Princess street can be detected in York, as you say Nige, garish, like a scene from an early colour version of Frankenstein. Apparently inhalers are obligatory if you wish to enter. Lush always seems to go hand in glove with those other high street phenomena, La Senza (tricky knickers), H&M (Swedish junk) and M&S (failing retailer)

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  2. Not yet seen one round here but then the smell could easily be masked by Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, a West Country Cornish Pasty bar, etc. Perhaps they could all amalgamate into the Devon Fried Soap Emporium whose products can be eaten or (minus the onions) melted down in the microwave and used as a body lotion or even, in farming circles, as a perfume.

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  3. A brilliant idea Mark - you cld clean up...

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  4. The idea is that it's all natural and organic - but, given the colours and the smells that seems rather hard to believe. They also make a disgusting 'natural deodorant' worn by hippy types that looks like black sludge and doesn't seem to have any capacity for reducing or masking body odour...

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