When L’Oréal bought The Body Shop in 2006 for £652 million, there was an outcry. It had been the defining brand of my generation. Anita Roddick first saw the idea in 1970 in the Bay Area of San Francisco, where sisters-in-law Jane Saunders and Peggy Short had opened a tiny store housed in CJs — a converted car repair shop on Telegraph Avenue. They were selling cosmetics with natural-sounding names in simple plastic bottles of varying sizes.
I first met Anita in 1977 when she had opened her second store. I loved everything I saw. At the time, I was selling my own natural shampoos, but most retailers didn’t like them. “Very authentic but not commercial,” I would always be told. But Anita saw the
