Laura Cummins, VP of Brand Values for The Body Shop

The Body Shop has been at the forefront of Fair Trade beauty products for decades, and its newest line of Body Shop body butters only serves to cement the brand's reputation as a cruelty-free organization. Its recently launched Honeymania collection features delicious-smelling honey from Ethiopia, all farmed by local families whose income has been assured by The Body Shop's undertaking to create solely Fair Trade products. In addition to this fantastic use of local workers, The Body Shop's collections are also 100% vegetarian, meaning they do not include any animal products often used in cosmetics and beauty products, such as fish scales and goat hair.

To learn more about The Body Shop's mission to inject large businesses with a Fair Trade mentality, while providing women with products that make them feel beautiful inside and out, Trend Hunter TV sat down with Laura Cummins, the Vice President of Brand Values at The Body Shop Canada. We got to talk to her about the delightfully sweet Honeymania line, the bold Colour Crush Makeup collection, and the equally pampering Camomile Makeup Remover range.

1.What inspired the Honeymania collection?

The Honeymania collection is an obvious choice for The Body Shop. Honey is a fantastic moisturizing ingredient, and at The Body Shop we've been buying honey from Ethiopia, our community Fair Trade partner since 2009. So it made sense to make the honey into a range of ultra-moisturizing body care products.

2.The Honeymania collection uses honey created using beekeeping techniques from Ethiopia. Could you elaborate a little bit on the process of beekeeping?

Beekeeping is a trade that is passed on through generations, typically from father to son. To get the honey, the beekeepers go out into the rainforest – it’s about a 10-day journey – and they go across to their own sections of the rain forest, and they climb the trees. It’s a male-dominated industry, really, because they have to be physically strong to climb the trees. However, more and more women are getting in on the action, too, since the honey has become so popular. They’re now setting up beekeeping on a smaller scale in their backyards.

3.The Colour Crush Makeup collection is also being launched today. Could you describe the basic feel and appearance of this new cosmetics line?

Colour Crush Makeup is an amazing new range of very, very vivid colors for lips and for eyes. This broad range of new products gives really high-impact, long-lasting colour, but without using any animal products.

4.Are there any beauty trends that you see becoming popular in the future?

The beauty trends right now are all about oils. Many people think that oil in beauty products makes their skin feel greasy, but that is often not the case if they’re carefully blended with the right kind of oils. For example, what we’re seeing a lot of are beautifying body oils, that you can use on your skin not only to moisturize it but to give it a really great glow for summertime. Oils are also being used in a lot of other ways, so for example, tea tree oil is also a fantastic antibacterial agent, so it’s been used as such for many years. At The Body Shop, we’re also using oils in our new cleansing range. Oil fights oil, so by putting the oil on your skin, it actually attracts the oil and the dirt away, leaving your skin really fresh and moisturized.

5.What’s your favorite product in the new Honeymania collection?

The Body Butter, without a doubt. It contains the honey from 16 bees. These bees have reached out to 8,000 flowers, so not only is it moisturizing, but the way it smells is absolutely divine, because it’s reminiscent of not only the sweetness of the honey, but of the flowers in the rain forest as well.

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