29 High Street - Exclusive to Lush Poole - a perfume that SMELLS LIKE LUSH.
I went into full geek-mode and spoke to our essential oils buyer about the tonnage of materials Lush uses each year. Rather than immediately thinking of individual products, I scanned the list and highlighted all the major materials, then scanned it again and caught all the materials that may not be used in high volumes but have a prominent odour profile. I now had a set of potential building blocks. Only then did I start listing Lush best-sellers and picking out themes from each of their product scents. Eventually I had an impressionist interpretation of the smell of a Lush shop, which is what was used in the bath product prototype. When I went back to the lab with the formula to work it up to a perfume, I added some extra facets and ended up with less of an impressionist interpretation; more of a sleight of hand where everyone who smells the scent seems to pick out their own interpretation of what a Lush shop smells like. One of the best moments of my entire life was at Lushfest, when we were setting up the Gorilla Perfume shop and a staff member walked past seconds after we had been spraying HQ perfume. She asked to try it and squeaked: “Oh my God! It smells just like the Lush shop!” She had no idea what the perfume was supposed to be about.
