Body Shop NZ has been put into voluntary liquidation. We reach out into the Dewberry mists of time to farewell some of our cruelty-free favs.  

Before Mecca was the mecca, before Sephora sold retinol to tweens and before the internet made beauty content a lucrative career path, there was The Body Shop. Anita Roddick, businesswoman, human rights campaigner and environmentalist, opened her first Body Shop in Brighton in 1976. The first Body Shop store opened in New Zealand in 1989 on Lambton Quay in Wellington. 

Time marches on, and old favourites fall out of favour. As the Herald reported this week, Body Shop NZ has followed the same downward trajectory as its parent company internationally and has been put into voluntary liquidation. The stores remain open for now, but a spokesperson for the appointed voluntary administrators, Calibre Partners, told The Post, “We are working closely with the management team to develop a strategy to sell all stock and begin to wind down the business.”

At the height of its fruity power, with 28 stores open across the country, the unmistakable scents of Fuzzy Peach, White Musk and Dewberry stunk up malls, classrooms and changing rooms nationwide. The cruelty-free skincare, perfumes, soaps, body butter and cooling pink peppermint foot lotion became coveted products and popular default gifts for teenage birthdays, teachers and netball court MVPs. Opening a Body Shop lip balm pot and swiping it on with your pinky finger was as much of a status symbol in playgrounds and school corridors in the 90s and 2000s as Croc charms are now. To mark its sad demise, here are the Body Shop products that created the strongest memories for some Spinoff writers.  

Cooling Peppermint foot rescue

How powerful and evil and absurd is the beauty industry that, at roughly 10 years old, I became obsessed with the state of my feet. So much so that I have very vivid memories of nicking my mum’s Body Shop pungent cooling peppermint foot rescue cream and slathering it on my trotters like a maniac, terrified that if left unrescued (?) and uncooled (?) my feet would wither (?) and I wouldn’t ever get a boyfriend (?). Also: why did we want our feet to smell like peppermint, famously the aspirational smell of the mouth? Is that actually how foot and mouth disease got started back in the day? Makes you think. / Alex Casey

Born Lippy lip balms 

In my high school in India, far from any Body Shop outlet, anyone venturing near a mall in a major city was expecting to bring some Body Shop products back with them. When I was about twelve, a friend who had been to Delhi gave me a tiny tub of grape-flavoured Born Lippy gloss. I applied it relentlessly, wandering around with a faintly purple-tinged mouth for months on end. I was fascinated by the fold out list of ingredients on the back, and there was something exotic about the French translation of the product name being emblazoned on the front. “They don’t test on animals,” I told my mum, having read all the fine print. My mother had probably heard this numerous times at this point and was completely uninterested, but she did at least let me buy another tub of clear grapefruit Born Lippy a few years later. At school dances, I carefully dabbed it over my cheap lipstick so I could have extra shiny lips for dancing to Justin Bieber music in the school hall with all the lights off. / Shanti Mathias

Stainless steel blackhead extractor

I know this is really far away tonally from the mouth-watering body smoothie buzz for which The Body Shop is known, but I have very vivid memories of wandering confidently into the St Luke’s body shop in Auckland as an 11 year-old and buying what was essentially a stainless steel surgical tool for doing open heart surgery on your face. Raised on the images of Clean and Clear and instilled with bigtime Pore Panic, I used this little tool, basically a thin knitting needle with a sharp eyelet at the end, to squeeze out each and every blackhead on my pre-pubescent nose, while silently crying through the pain. I was so obsessed with this frankly illegal bit of kit that I tried to take it on a family holiday with us, but it got confiscated at border security because they thought it was a weapon. Happy memories. / AC

Avocado (and other) body butter

The body butters were the go-to for young girls who hated makeup but wanted in on the fruity energy. I had the driest lips and skin known to man as a child (I still do, actually) and knew even at eight years old that nothing The Body Shop had would be of any use to me. And yet I desperately wanted the smelly body butters. In the end, I used two across my childhood: shea (didn’t know what it was but liked the picture) and avocado (cursed). Both smelled delicious and sat on top of my crusty skin rather than being absorbed by it. I didn’t care, the ritual of scooping out the green avocado butter that eerily had the same texture as a smooth guacamole was the most important part. When it very quickly ran out I returned to my Eurecin moisturiser but the scent lives on in my memories. / Madeleine Chapman

Tea Tree Oil range

Ironically when I started using The Body Shop Tea Tree line I had not yet had my first pimple. Nevertheless, I still persisted in dousing my face in tea tree toner every morning (did not wash my face or moisturise, just toned??) and blotting my nose with the tea tree blotting paper. In later years I had hoped the pure tea tree oil would zap off blemishes – it did not, but it did burn and that felt like progress. I was also very impressed with the concept of tea tree foundation, although it did seem too good to be true. 10/10 marketing. / Sophie Dowson

The Body Shop gift basket

You could not swing a cat at a birthday party for high school or intermediate-aged young women and girls in the 90s without hitting a Body Shop gift basket. As you gathered around watching the birthday girl open presents, the cloying scent of The Body Shop’s Dewberry perfume spray trapped in your throat, there was always a moment where the size of The Body Shop gift basket was compared to others given or received that year. Shopping for them made you feel sophisticated and lavish as you gathered up as much of a matching set from one particular fruity scent line as possible — soap bars, bath oil beads, bath salts, mini fruit soaps, lip balms, shower gels, moisturisers and perfume sprays. You took your bundle to a special counter and watched as a clean-faced shop assistant artfully arranged it on top of the organic-looking shredded paper filler, expertly pulled a tight plastic wrapping over them and added a green ribbon bow with a flourish. Gathering and giving the complete set in Fuzzy Peach, Pink Grapefruit, Dewberry, or White Musk was a true marker of generous excess. /Anna Rawhiti-Connell

Peach Body Butter 

Before the Sol de Janeiro Bum Bum Cream, there was the peach body butter from The Body Shop – a true icon of my teenage years. Back then, my mall hot spots were Jay Jays, Just Jeans, and of course, The Body Shop. Stepping into the store was like entering a sensory wonderland; each corner had its own distinct scent – not overpowering, just perfectly inviting. It begged you to twist open one of those iconic circular pottles of body butter. Each pottle featured a stunning, lifelike image of the fruit it embodied, making you feel like you were shopping in the produce section of an artisanal market. The peach scent was my absolute favourite, and even now, I know one whiff would instantly transport me back to those days. /Jin Fellet