Dewberry is back! Ahoy there middle-aged friends who remember The Body Shop in the 80s! The Body Shop Perfume Bar was a top weekly destination for me, firstly at home in Cwmbran as a sixth former, and then at the Exeter branch when I went to uni.
For those unlucky enough not to have experienced it, the Perfume Bar existed in most branches of The Body Shop and was a set of narrow necked glass jars with a glass dipper. There was a huge range of fragrance oils and you could try them all and then go to the counter and ask for a little bottle of your favourite. Prices were affordable, even on a student budget, and I often left with Raspberry Ripple Bathing Bubbles and Elderflower Eye Gel too. How I long for those!
The BIG sellers back then were White Musk and Dewberry. I was team White Musk, branching out into Japanese Musk and Mostly Musk for variety. However, I enjoyed the fact that everywhere I went, it smelled of Dewberry: on buses, in bars, at the cafeteria, in lectures, in shops. Good times.
Fast forward to 2026 and The Body Shop, long since under new ownership, has had a brainwave and is bringing back Dewberry. I’ve already got my little bottle of oil right here, and yes, I’m already thoroughly anointed. So does it bring back all the old feelings? Yes and no.
The Body Shop Dewberry smells more like blackcurrant than I remember, although it is a close relative of the blackberry. In real life, a dewberry is more sour and more tart than a blackberry and appears in smaller clusters, but the two are interchangeable in recipes. Blackberries have been used in fragrances to great effect, namely L’Artisan Parfumeur Mure et Musc (an absolute dream!) and, more recently, Shay & Blue Blackberry Woods.
There is no blackberry in Dewberry, or indeed, any dewberry, but I’m not here to split hairs. If you blend pear, blackcurrant, apple, grapefruit, peach and apricot with roses, freesia, lilies and jasmine, the sum of all parts smells like a sweet, over-ripe dewberry peeking out among a burst of flowers. That little combo is what gives us this amazing bus trip down memory lane, and a very welcome trip it is too, back when tickets were paper, cash was king and The Cure narrated all my days.
I hope The Body Shop (now owned by Natura), realise that this could be the start of something beautiful.
Where to buy it
I bought mine from The Body Shop online. Delivery was quick and it cost me £20 for 14ml of perfume oil. A little goes a long way, but don’t hold back if you don’t want to. There’s also body butter, body yoghurt, hand balm, shower gel and a body mist for head to toe Dewberry immersion.
Disclosure
I paid for this and I have no affiliation to The Body Shop or anyone. Opinions are always my own.
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