About a week ago I discovered the Lush store at one of my local malls. It’s pretty new and I think I’d noticed it once or twice before, but never gone in. Big mistake going in, because now I’m going to keep going back and spending money.
The store partially drew me in because it is called “LUSH – Fresh Handmade Cosmetics”, which made me think they also had makeup. They don’t. It’s all bath/body/hair stuff, but what wonderful stuff it is! The products are all-natural/vegetarian, with over 70% being vegan. They use natural ingredients and about two-thirds of their items are preservative-free; the products are hand-made, they do not test on animals & don’t do business with suppliers that do, and they use ethical suppliers for their ingredients (this is all from their website).
I’ve been in twice so far, and the salesgirls have been very friendly and eager to help, but not obnoxious. The store smells delightful and it’s hard to choose just a few things to buy! My first time in, I started with two things: the Buffy body bar (bottom in pic) and the Therapy massage bar (top in pic).
The Therapy massage bar is a shea and cocoa butter bar with lavender & orange oil for a relaxing scent. They use organic fair-trade shea butter and cocoa butter for this product. It is designed to be massaged into the skin and not leave oil on your skin; it does absorb in pretty well. Cocoa butter is good for stretch marks & they advertise it as particularly good for pregnant bellies. Personally, I’ve been using cocoa butter products for years now on the stretch marks on my hips (from weight loss/gain, not pregnancy, lol) and it works very well to minimize them and really moisturize the whole area.
I picked up this bar because of my love for cocoa butter and the yummy scent: it smells like other cocoa butter products I’ve had before, but with a hint of lavender. The girl at the store explained that the reason the bar has one raised bump and three little holes on it is because apparently one out of every four babies is born with an outtie belly button, and this bar is marketed as being good for pregnant women. Cute! 
I’ve used this about a week now & it’s moisturizing, working great on my hips, smells yummy, so overall a great product; however, it basically does the same thing as the Cococare cocoa butter stick I have been using for a long time, which costs less than $2 at drugstores. I probably won’t buy the Therapy massage bar again just because of the cost as compared to the cococare stick, but it is really a great product.
Now onto the Buffy body bar. I cannot even begin to express how much I LOVE this! It is a scrub bar of shea and cocoa butter mixed with ground rice, almonds and aduki beans for exfoliating. It smells like shea and maybe a little oatmeal-y to me, but there’s no oatmeal in it – not a delicious scent, but I like it. I bought the smaller one because it was cheaper, have used it for over a week every other day, and it’s almost gone, so I will buy the larger one next time.
(Buffy after a few uses, showing the abrasiveness of it)
I use this bar in the shower right before I get out: just scrub wherever you want, then rinse & dry off. It leaves your skin feeling like you’ve already put lotion on - it’s not greasy, and your skin feels just so soft & smooth. I have a huge problem area of dry skin in the winter on my hips, and I usually have to slather on lotion after a shower because it gets itchy. I use the Buffy bar and don’t feel the need to put any lotion on whatsoever, and it has eliminated dry flaky skin I get on my hips. It is actually a bit abrasive so be careful if your skin is super sensitive, but I love it on my arms & legs in addition to any other dry skin areas. I will keep buying this again and again, I can’t say enough good things about it!
One other thing; at Lush they use very little packaging. The bars, soaps, bath bombs etc are sold without any packaging and displayed in bins and stacks (which makes for pretty cute displays). They put things into little paper baggies when you buy them, for which they use as much post-consumer recycled materials for as they can, or you can buy tins for $2.95, which are re-usable of course. I bought tins with these two items.
So to conclude, Lush is a new favorite of mine. I’ve made a second purchase already and will be continuing to go back to try things out. If you have one near you and haven’t been in, absolutely check it out.
EDIT 5/2/10: DO NOT leave your buffy bar in a hot car 
Mine melted to liquid in the car yesterday on the 6-hour drive home from Jersey. I was so sad last night when I got in the shower & realized it was totally dead! I don’t know what you can do to remedy this if it has to be in a hot location, but my apartment gets pretty hot in the summer so I’m going to have to figure something out.