Pretty Iconic: A Personal Look at the Beauty Products that Changed the World. Sali Hughes

I first moved to London, aged 15, Molton Brown was the coolest hair salon around. Opened in 1973 and named after its home, South Molton Street, and Brown’s fashion store, located a few doors down and owned by Molton Brown’s founder Caroline Burstein’s parents, Molton Brown was where Sam McKnight – arguably the most successful session hairstylist of all time – made his name, and was among the first of a teenage Kate Moss’s modelling clients.

      Molton Brown specialised in natural hairstyling techniques at a time when harsh chemical treatments and heated tools were all the rage, and their sought-after product was the ‘Molton Browner’, a dusty-pink quilted bendy roller, stiffened with a wire loop, that was wound into sections of hair and slept in overnight. I was gifted a dozen by my Aunt Sue and though I was wholly inept at using them (the resulting style was reliably disastrous), they were so pretty, so unlike anything I’d ever seen, that I adored them out of all proportion.

      I finally got to visit the salon myself when they opened a little shop in reception. Here, they sold body lotions and soaps, and unexpectedly pro-grade beauty kit. It was here I bought my first ever make-up brush roll (I still have it) and my first bottle of Orange & Bergamot Hand Wash. I would never have believed that this ancillary product in a line known for its haircare would become a beauty phenomenon, launch an entire category of luxury handwashes (paving the way for wonderful brands like Cowshed and L’Occitane) and be copied so mercilessly worldwide. Nowadays, handwash and hand cream are the products for which Molton Brown is best known. They are the sign of a good-quality boutique hotel, an unfailingly well-received token of love on Mother’s Day, and a clear message of gratitude to a teacher at the end of term. Their high-quality natural oils make for delicate, authentic scents and gentle, skin-softening cleansing.

      Sadly, the same cannot be said for the dozens of brands and retailers who’ve exploited Molton Brown’s cachet and very modest, easily replicated packaging, and knocked up their own. I’m all for a designer dupe, whether a Miu Miu-inspired coat from Topshop or an Eames-style desk bought in IKEA, but there’s no doubt that over the years Molton Brown has seen its excellent product devalued by impostors. Worse still is the common practice of businesses refilling real Molton Brown bottles with some industrial soap bought in Costco, sending an illusory message of luxury. I can’t imagine how many people assume they’re using the real thing then wonder, as they breathe in the smell of car air freshener, what all the fuss is about.

      Palmer’s Original Cocoa Butter

      Some time around my seventh or eighth birthday, my mother returned home from Cardiff with a bottle of Cocoa Butter Hand & Body Lotion from one of the very first branches of Body Shop. She’d engaged the sales consultant in conversation, told her about my dry, scaly, inherited skin condition, and been promised that cocoa butter would help. The lotion was nothing short of revelatory and marked a huge turning point in my life. I’d previously used only horrible, NHS-prescribed bath oils and emollient creams that sat thickly on the surface of my skin, smelling like hospitals and never sinking into anything other than my school tights. Conversely, the Body Shop lotion sank a little better into my skin, soothing, softening and making it smell of Milky Bar chocolate. That one bottle of lotion set me down a path of skincare obsession. I began tweaking the cocoa butter – adding olive oil from the kitchen, pouring it into baths, mixing it with Tate & Lyle to slough off the flakes before a soak. The only problem with the Body Shop lotion was that it did leave an oleaginous film on my skin, and didn’t improve its overall tone and evenness (I looked a bit pink and veiny) and so I began searching for an alternative.

      I found Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Formula Lotion on an Afro-Caribbean beauty stall while skiving off school in an indoor market and soon found my prayers answered. This – the world’s bestselling cocoa butter product – sinks in more rapidly and thoroughly than any other I’ve found, smooths skin, banishes the occasional ashiness of brown and black skins and leaves all legs with an even, healthier-looking tone. It softens limbs, cuticles, elbows, feet, scalp and babies’ bums, and smells of holidays, warm beaches and of ice-cream sundaes melting in hot chocolate sauce. Its cheerfully cheap price tag means it can be treated like an essential family household item and slathered on with abandon whenever dryness strikes. There are now dozens of products in the Palmer’s range, but the true icon here is the waxy formulation sold in tubs (don’t be put off by its solidity: the secret to cocoa butter’s success is that it’s the only known natural moisturiser that melts at body temperature).