Kicking Off New Images
The Body Shop, the company that helped establish the idea of promoting social causes along with skin-care products, is tweaking the concept again. The 26-year-old company, founded by environmental activist Anita Roddick in Britain, has revamped its entire cosmetics line to deliver color along with a double benefit--one to moisturize skin and the other to aid disadvantaged communities.
The new bamboo-inspired packaging is the most obvious example of the Body Shop’s makeover. Makeup brushes that stand up on end and mascara tubes look like spindly black bamboo stalks. The company ditched the traditional weights and bearings in packaging that make lipsticks feel substantial and purses heavy.
All color cosmetics except the oil-free foundation now include marula nut oil, a moisturizer derived from a tree found in southern Africa. Through the company’s community trade program, the oil is purchased from a Namibia women’s cooperative to boost the local economy. Its ongoing community trade programs elsewhere help boost demand for ingredients such as olive oil, cocoa butter, honey and beeswax.
The new “color with care” concept is the result of a company-wide restructuring that began more than three years ago and that focuses on the U.S. Stores will be remodeled using renewable resources such as bamboo flooring and recycled wood fixtures.
The color range of cosmetics has grown as well to include more shades, including 25 foundations.
Though the company has always combined serious social issues with the playfulness of makeup and body care, it hasn’t abandoned the fun this time around. The collection encourages experimentation with five “adapters” that change the character of shadows, lipsticks and face powders with the addition or subtraction of shine and shimmer.
By the holidays, the company will introduce cubes of sparkly eye shadow that are a cross between a Rubik’s Cube and a compact.
Sparkly Shoes, Eyewear
Though Judith Leiber, the master maker of the minaudiere bag, has long been retired, her company is ever expanding.
This fall the company will introduce its first collections of footwear and eyewear, both with the signature sparkle of Leiber’s rhinestones.
The 30 footwear styles include low-heeled pumps, boots, slingbacks and simple strappy evening sandals in exotic leathers such as alligator and lizard. With golden soles and some semi-precious stones and pearls as accents, they command a high-end price--$350 to $8,000. A small, family-operated factory near Florence, Italy, will manufacture the shoes, a nod to Leiber’s continuing commitment to quality handwork. The luxurious bags are still made in the longtime New York factory. Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills will carry the shoes.
The eyewear, which includes sunglasses, readers and ophthalmic frames, also sparkles with the signature rhinestones and hand-set semiprecious stones and sells for $320 to $1,250 at Neiman’s and Maison d’Optique in Sherman Oaks and Optical Designs in Santa Monica.
Royal Line
After centuries of royals’ influence on the fashion of their subjects, a royal is taking his sense of style directly to the public.
The fashion industry earned a boost in prestige this week when the London Sunday Times reported that Prince Charles will launch a clothing collection called Duchy Originals, the name of his organic food firm. The company, which donates profits to charitable causes, is also diversifying into garden furniture.
A source in the story said the prince felt a “deep sense of obligation” to help the country’s faltering rural economy, so the collection will be made by rural workshops with wool from British sheep farms. Britain’s livestock farmers have suffered significantly because many herds have been destroyed to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
The collection, which will consist of country-style tweed suits, sweaters and scarves, is set to debut next year.
