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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Jem Bartholomew

INSANE: A scented awakening how the body shop influenced generations | Rare Historical Photos

The Body Shop’s founder, Anita Roddick, smiles at the camera while carrying a basket and picking items from a shelf in one of the shops
‘She ran her business in a male-dominated world’: The Body Shop’s founder, Anita Roddick, in 2001. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features

Walking into The Body Shop was like “entering a sweet shop”. It “literally made your mouth water”, says Stasia Smith-Turpin, who would head to the Lancaster store after school with friends when she was 16 in the 90s. She recalls how a wave of fragrance would hit her as she entered the shop, and she would test and smell the soaps, creams and potions while planning how to spend her pocket money.

Smith-Turpin, 48, would spray herself with dewberry perfume – the scent of summer berries – before riding the bus home. One day, to her mother’s horror, she applied too much (“my arms were literally greasy!”) and “apparently she could smell me from the bus stop at the bottom of the hill”, she says.

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