Don’t be duped! At Lush, we deal in values

With great innovation, comes a l’il imitation. We’re not here to put you in a sticky situation when it comes to dupe or not to dupe, just show you we’re not away with the fairies when it comes to value (and values) for money! Come on and let the good times roll, it’s time to talk about why we’re the originals. 

We’ve been pioneers in the cosmetic industry for decades; from the bath bomb to the shampoo bar, we’ve certainly made our mark. And it’s true what they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery, so we’re not surprised there’s the odd Lush dupe out there. We're never ones to turn down a compliment, but we know you can sniff knock-offs a mile off, so let’s unpack what your nose already knows.

All—di freshest ingredients!

Natural, clean, green — you need to wear a helmet with all the buzzwords getting thrown around. At Lush, we have always believed fresh is best and have been working with fresh produce since day dot. ‘Well that’s all good and well, but what does that mean for me?’ We hear you say. Fresh means putting the whole fruit in and producing products with natural ingredients and fewer preservatives. We’re able to do this thanks to a few things:

• Careful ordering of ingredients from ethical sources to ensure freshness and quality.
• Products made by hand, with care and attention — to maximise quality and minimise wastage.
• Batches honestly labelled with when it was made and who made it — transparent information for customers so they can see their products haven’t been sat on a shelf for years!
• Products made to order, little and often, so they reach customers when they are really fresh.
• No stockpiling of ingredients or large stock-holding of products — we get products out to shops and Mail Order fast and fresh.

You’d have to really stretch your two pounds to get those kinds of values for money. We have a whole team dedicated to seeking out the best and most ethical ingredients for our products. This requires creativity and a keen attention to detail, as described by our Buying Team:

“At Lush, we combine creativity with a commitment to sourcing the safest, most beautiful, and expertly-produced ingredients, aiming not just for sustainability but for regeneration, giving back more to the world than we take. We look to purchase directly from producers and foster transparent, collaborative supply chain relationships, to build strong, long-term networks that support communities and source high-quality materials.”

Everyone say ‘Thank you Buying Team!’ 

Happy people making happy soaps

If you’ve ever used one of our products, you’ll have seen our compounders smiling back at you in the shower (we’re a very friendly bunch). Whether you find these strange or have a favourite face you exclusively seek out, these serve an important purpose. Our beautiful ingredients require delicacy and expertise that just aren’t matched by machines, which is why every one is handmade and hand-filled. The batch sticker tells you exactly who made your product and when, ensuring we have full traceability and gives you valuable information about just how fresh your new favourite product is (plus when to use it by, of course). No more decoding batch codes — we’ve spelled it all out for you! Plus, what body spray dupe would have been made by a Mauricio like ours?

Lush says Relax

Now you know what goes into buying our ingredients, let’s explore why we choose these for your beautiful skin. And what better way than to look at the often imitated, never duplicated, Sleepy shower gel. This has been scenting your bedtime suds since 2018 and has garnered a few copycats in this time, but this isn’t your Granny’s lavender shower gel (unless it is then sorry for presuming, Nan — you’ve got good taste). 

We like to keep our scents where we can smell them; right under our nose here in Poole. All our fragrances are made in-house in the elusive EC department, a.k.a the only place you’ll find our perfumers tinkering away at new scents. Always one for the road less travelled, we create our fragrances instead of buying them in order to have full creative control. Lavender shower gels are a dime a dozen, but it’s the sweet tonka and warming benzoin that makes Sleepy feel like a warm, comforting hug. This unique gourmand take on a lavender shower gel doesn’t come cheap. We use the best of the best when it comes to the ingredients that make up our fragrances; both in ethics and in quality. And we don’t skimp out on skin-loving ingredients, either. 

A generous helping of oat milk, glycerine and carrageenan are what make this bedtime beauty so wonderfully hydrating. We create an oat infusion by steeping the oats in hot water to produce a concentrated liquid full of wonderfully calming and soothing benefits. Now those are some real foam bargains.

Dupes may come and go, but Snow Fairy is forever

The world of Snow Fairy is full of bright pink bubbles and clouds of candy floss, but don’t forget the ethics of our beloved bubblegum angel. If you need a reminder, let’s melt the frost off this fairy and talk about how the queen of winter leaves the world lusher than we found it. 

You know the holidays are coming when you can smell the instantly recognisable sweet scent of Snow Fairy, but what is it that makes some fairies soar and others just hover above ground? A fairy doesn’t give away all its tricks, but since we’re friends, we’ll let you know the secret to what makes Snow Fairy so irresistible.

If you know anything about perfumery, you might know the peculiar way in which musk has traditionally been sourced. For those who don’t, it involves being extracted from a certain gland from musk deers (how they figured that out, we don’t fancy finding out). Not ones to be in the business of poking at animals, we use a synthetic musk to add the underlying sweetness whilst staying cruelty free. In fact, we have been committed to not testing on animals since we first started. If you want to be our supplier, you gotta get with our policies, this means:

• Not testing on animals or using materials that contain animal derivatives that are unsuitable for vegetarians.
• Not knowingly purchasing ingredients from suppliers that have conducted, commissioned or been party to animal testing after our fixed cut-off date 1st June 2007.
• Suppliers must commit to no further animal testing in the future and use Lush acceptable in-vitro alternatives (by which we mean tests conducted in a controlled environment outside of a living organism).

And we’re not just committed to protecting the animals; we fight hard for the environment. According to the British Beauty Society, in 2025 only 14% of plastic packaging from the beauty industry will make it to a recycling plant, with only 9% actually being recycled. This is why we try to reduce packaging and go naked where possible — the products, not us.

For the products that do still have packaging, we prefer to use recycled materials; buying Prevented Ocean Plastic™ or buying our own plastic back and rewarding our customers for returning it to us to recycle. While the specifics vary depending on our different markets, Lush customers are able to return some of our plastic packaging in exchange for either one of our iconic fresh face masks or money back on a Lush purchase. We give this material a new life, recycling either in house or through a third party to be made into more packaging or other objects like playgrounds and park benches. In the UK, our black pots are made of 100% recycled materials and our clear bottles are made from 100% post-consumer recycled PET (excluding lids and labels, but we’re working on those). We’ve still got work to do, for instance, our pesky pumps, virgin until recently, now have 30-60% recycled content but we won’t stop until all of them are made from recycled content. 

With ethics to boot!

We put a whole lot of love into our bottles and there’s a human touch behind each step of getting our products from our factories to your bathroom. We’re not here to tell you where to spend your hard-earned cash, just reminding you where to get true values for your money, even before looking at our campaigning or Giving products.

We’re not just all chat, come visit us in store and ask for a consultation to see how the original compares to the dupes, we can even send you home with a sample for some thorough cross examination. In the meantime, check out some of our most duped products and find out what the hype is!

Check out the trendsetting products that make everyone want to smell like us