B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful

All perfumes & Information

“B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful” was a sister company of the cosmetics company now known worldwide as “Lush” and existed from 2003 to 2010. The collection focused on fragrances, glittery make-up and make-up accessories. Lush's sister had stores in London, Leeds, Dorset (UK), Tokyo and Vienna as well as her own website.

The concept of the brand with the capital “B” resembled Aladdin's treasure trove and implemented girlish decadence. The founders opened their first store for the new brand in September 2003 on Carnaby Street in London in an opulent style with gilded walls and fabric flowers. Co-founder Rowena Bird followed an inspiration from her childhood days playing at her Aunt Penny's dressing table. She searched for packaging shapes all over the world to bring fun and playfulness to life. She found most of her inspiration for bottles, colors and jewel-encrusted jars in India and Morocco. Her stores in Covent Garden, Carnaby Street and Poole, described by the brand itself as “delightfully decadent”, were nods to French perfumeries and a mix of vintage and boho-chic influences. Each counter in a test-friendly environment was to tell a different story. The fragrance “Two Hearts Beating as One” was a passionate and sensual homage to the cabaret à la Moulin Rouge, “Love” was advertised on a 1950s-style dressing table with floral fairy lights and “Dirty” with a tongue-in-cheek workbench appeal.

2008 saw the opening of the first “B Bar”, a make-over and cocktail bar, which was followed by a second on Oxford Street in 2009.

Quite a few of the fragrances known today under the Lush brand originally came from the “B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful” brand, such as 1000 Kisses Deep, B Scent, Cocktail, Dear John, Dirty, Keep It Fluffy, Ladyboy (Fantabulosa) and Love, as well as Superworld Unknown and Breath of God. Ladyboy was intended as "a tribute to all things unconventionally kitsch". However, this fragrance was renamed Fantabulosa in later years, as the original name was deemed incompatible with LGBTQ rights.

Like Lush, “B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful” committed itself to the campaign against animal testing, which Lush established within the group of companies under the internal designation “Supplier Specific Boycott Policy” (SSBP). While other policies merely exclude the use of ingredients tested on animals in cosmetics, SSBP meant that Lush and its sister companies were not allowed to do business with any companies that carried out animal testing for any purpose for cosmetics, food, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, etc. The SSBP also applied to the B brand. In addition, “B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful” applied the corporate rules for fair trade supply chains, for example to avoid child labor in the countries of origin of supplier materials and for gender equality.

The B project was abandoned in 2010 and replaced by the “Gorilla Perfume” concept. With a few exceptions, most of the fragrances from the “B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful” brand were integrated into the Lush collection over the following years.