The second ever branch of The Body Shop opened in Reading just six months after Anita Roddick opened her first shop in Brighton in 1976. It was a mecca for the teenage girls of Reading. Beautifully fragrant,it was oddly juxtaposed with the infamous fresh fish vendors of Union Street, or 'Smelly Alley' as it is fondly known, but alternative emporiums abounded - in another we bought Liberty dungarees in advance of The Dexy's Midnight Runner look. The 50ml small bottles were pocket-money affordable and I yearned for the seemingly extravagent litre bottles: unperfumed foaming bath oil and body lotion to which you had added the fragrance of your choice from a cornucopia of bottles; coconut oil shampoo, coconut soap, cucumber cleansing lotion and jojoba moisturiser. They were all basically packaged, environmentally aware, with the signature round, handwritten labels.
Anita Roddick's own story is on http://www.anitaroddick.com/aboutanita.php
