BOULDER — Shoppers don’t head into a cosmetics store looking for clothing, but they usually expect to see the staff wearing some.
Dressed in nothing but aprons and underwear, some cosmetic-shop employees hit the Pearl Street Mall on Wednesday to urge consumers to stop buying products wrapped in packaging that will most likely end up sitting in a landfill for the next thousand years.
“This is a fun, cheeky way to get a serious message across,” said Allie Leung, a spokeswoman for LUSH, which has 30 stores in cities across the country, including Aspen and Boulder, where employees showed some skin Wednesday. “We are encouraging shoppers to purchase products that are ‘naked.’ ”
The store’s original plan to go bare-bottomed went south when Boulder police stopped by to say employees couldn’t expose themselves completely.
“Butt cheeks are included in ‘genitalia,’ ” Barrett Smith, LUSH’s store manager, said police told him.
Two almost-naked employees — who volunteered for the gig — spent 30 minutes yelling “Ask me why I’m naked!” at the top of their lungs and offering product and company pamphlets.
LUSH has minimal or no packaging for its products, including shampoo, which looks like a round bar of soap and is made of natural ingredients, such as rosemary.
“If it catches people’s attention for the half an hour we don’t have clothes on, then it’s worth it,” said Leah Mahanti, a sales associate at LUSH, in nothing but her apron, white panties and black boots. “We want to spotlight what packaging does to the environment.”
Many people walking along the Pearl Street Mall politely declined the pamphlets while averting their eyes, smiling and sometimes blushing.
Others wanted to take a closer look — and even a picture.
Eric Wu, who works for Fuser, a Boulder-based company that consolidates e-mail and social networking accounts, snapped shots of the duo with his cellphone.
“Now my friends can see that I was here,” Wu said while uploading the photos to , a website where people post pictures of places they’ve visited.
Emily McKevitt, Wu’s colleague at Fuser, thought it was a good promotion and raised awareness about the store.
“If they get their point across, more power to them,” she said.
Some passers-by weren’t impressed by the store’s “naked” effort.
“It scared me away from the no- packaging idea,” said Paige Windsor, 26, of Boulder. “Sometimes clothes are a good thing.”
Steve Graff: 303-954-1661 or sgraff@denverpost.com
