Banana

Slip on some fresh banana for ap-peel-ingly shiny hair and hydrated skin. Bananas are rich in vitamins and minerals and have a high potassium content. They are moisturising for the skin and help to condition the hair effectively.

The banana plant, Musa paradisiaca, is a large, perennial herb. Its trunk consists of tightly wrapped leaf sheaths, with a stem that pushes up from the centre and grows flower spikes. Blossoms grow into upturned ‘fingers’, with each bunch containing as many as twenty fingers or bananas. Some plants have been producing fresh fruit for over a hundred years.

Bananas are made up of 12% starch and lots of fibre, giving them their unique texture that we know and love. It makes them perfect for creating a sumptuous, thick consistency in certain products, such as hair treatments and body lotions. 

Moisturising

Conditioning

Antifungal

Shiny hair

Creamy, fruity smell

Bananas are good for you when applied topically, not just as a healthy snack. They are rich in vitamins A, B, C and E, which are essential for maintaining supple skin and strong hair. Banana skin is thought to possess antifungal properties, and both peel and pulp contain natural oils to boost shiny hair and give the skin a nourished, healthy glow. 

Every week, perfectly ripe bananas arrive fresh from local suppliers and go straight into our handmade products. That means you get the freshest fruit possible - no peeling back on quality here! 

Nearly all of our fresh fruit and vegetables are purchased from the same specialist distributor, with whom Lush UK* has been working since 2005. Depending on the time of year, they source products from different countries to ensure availability all year round. They work hard to supply as many organic products as possible and provide the highest quality available the rest of the time.

*With several manufacturing sites across the globe, this information may vary depending on where your Lush products were made.

Tonka? Sweeeet!!

The tall camaru tree (Dipteryx odorata) belongs to the legume family (Fabaceae) and grows in Costa Rica, Brazil and Peru. It bears fruits that contain a single seed, oblong and smooth, called the tonka bean. The bean is used as a spice, grated into culinary preparations such as desserts to add a sweet, complex flavour. It can also be subjected to a solvent extraction process to obtain an absolute: a thick, concentrated extract of the bean’s scent that is used in perfumery.

Has a warm, sweet, creamy aroma.

Rounds and smoothes perfume blends.

Makes everything gourmand!

Soothes the skin and comforts the mind.

Some will say the tonka bean smells like vanilla, but this hasty judgment does not reflect the jet-black bean's qualities. Tonka has its own beautiful fragrance. It is sweet yet fruity, reminiscent of cherries and bitter almonds, and has notes of hay. This complex scent is mainly due to coumarin, an aromatic compound that naturally occurs in tonka in such quantities that, when it dries, it forms a white crystallised coating around the bean. 

Read Lush’s perfumer Alina Gliwinska enthusiast take on tonka seed extract, also known as tonka absolute.

As said above, the main aromatic compound of tonka is coumarin. Coumarin is toxic when ingested in high doses, which explains why the United States has banned the use of tonka in food. However, it is considered safe for use in cosmetics, provided that the IFRA (International Fragrance Association) recommendations regarding concentration are followed. Which is what we do!

The tonka beans we purchase are wild-harvested by indigenous and local communities in the Amazon forest, helping provide livelihoods for those who are protecting one of the richest ecosystems in the world. Through these partnerships, we ensure quality products, empowerment and economic support.

Among these communities are the Kayapo people of Brazil, who carefully collect fallen tonka fruits and manually crack each one open with hammers to extract the valuable beans. The beans are then sun-dried and gathered in large sacks before being transported to France, where they are refined into an absolute for use in our products.

Tonka absolute reveals its sweetness in some of our most tempting Gourmand fragrances while complementing the lullaby sung by lavender and vanilla in our relaxing Sleepy range.

Vanilla is the unmistakable, uplifting and sweet scent we all know and love.

Vanilla beans (pods) are the fruits of the orchid Vanilla planifolia. Centuries ago, one could only purchase vanilla from Mexico, as the flowers required a local bee to pollinate and grow the precious pod. Thanks to the discovery of a hand pollination technique in 1841, orchids can now be cultivated in most tropical areas close to the equator. This step requires specialised know-how and must be carried out a few hours after the flower opens; otherwise, it will wilt.

Each blossom produces a single bean, which is normally harvested after eight or nine months. The beans then pass through a complex curing process before becoming the black-brown fragrant spice we all know. This process usually involves four steps: soaking in hot water, sweating in a warm environment, drying for a few weeks, and conditioning (packing in boxes) to develop flavours.

It has a sweet fragrance with uplifting, de-stressing and aphrodisiac qualities.

The sugars in vanilla act as humectants, which minimise moisture loss.

The spice is soothing, softening and antibacterial for the skin.

Its main aromatic compound, vanillin, is an antioxidant that helps the skin to stay firm and radiant.

Since Madagascar, the world's first vanilla producer, stopped regulating vanilla prices in the 1990s, its trade has seen ups and downs. The latest struggles began in 2012 when very low harvests caused demand for the spice to exceed supply. Since vanilla is a rather rare natural delicacy that cannot be rushed, the situation quickly snowballed into huge price increases (over 100%), poor quality and crime.

In 2016, the situation in Uganda (where we buy our pods) became critical and was reported to us in an article by Lulu, owner of the Ndali farm. Resellers and agents working on commission began buying vanilla that was not even cured properly yet. Vanilla pods must reach maturity and undergo the full curing process to develop all the notes of their wonderful taste and aroma, and to prevent mould. During price crises, crops are sold far too early, and pods can even be stolen from the fields before they're ripe. Farmers try to expand their crops to meet demand, and governments implement drastic measures. Eventually, when things finally calm down, farmers find themselves with too much production and prices drop tragically, as has been the case since 2019.

We love natural vanilla so much that we couldn't stop using it. Thanks to our dedicated team of creative buyers, year after year and month after month, we have found solutions to the market’s turmoil. Find more information on each source in the description of the main vanilla ingredients we use:

Vanilla Extract, combines several ingredients whose comforting scent enhances our perfumes and skin-soothing cosmetics.

Vanilla Pod Powder, which adds vanilla’s signature tiny black dots to our products.

Want to dive straight into our range of vanilla-scented products? They're ready for you.