You may have heard the origin story of spa brand Cowshed before — it’s a tale of wonder that’s intrinsically connected to the beginnings of Soho House hotels too. It takes its name from its unlikely birthplace: a Somerset cow shed. It was 1998 and Nick Jones (founder of Soho House) had just opened Babington House, his West Country retreat. Nick and perfumer Richard Howard were at one of those legendary dinner parties in Babington’s Victorian walled garden, surrounded by the kind of fragrant English countryside that makes you want to bottle it. Which is, quite literally, what they did.
Fast-forward nearly 30 years, however, and Cowshed is much harder to pigeonhole. It stands independently as a respected name in beauty circles, for starters; it has a wider international fan club, and has irrefutably outgrown the walled garden’s botanical supply.
There are bath and body products, home fragrance and even branded spas — the majority of which are found in Soho House hotels worldwide. We caught up with their CEO, Jordan Schlipf, to bathe in the brand’s success and explore what comes next.
Cowshed has come a long way since the Nineties. What can you tell us about its evolution?
Perfumer Richard Howard developed the original formulations using botanical ingredients sourced directly from the walled garden at Babington House. The approach was instinctive and deeply rooted in place: therapeutic and entirely unlike anything else on the market. Guests fell so in love with the products they encountered in the spa that letting them take that feeling home became the obvious next step.
Nearly 30 years on, we’re in a new era. The fragrances have been entirely reimagined by our new fragrance expert, who approached the brief with the same reverence for the original, honouring the emotional identity of each scent while giving them greater depth, a more contemporary character and a stronger, more immersive scent throw. It’s the first time the formulations have changed since 1998. Not an erasure, but an evolution. Same soul. New scents.
Can you tell us about its British ingredients?
Britain is in our bones. Cowshed was born from Somerset, and that rootedness in British landscape and botanicals has never left us. As part of our relaunch, we’ve introduced British botanicals into every single formulation, and every product continues to be manufactured right here in the UK.
Our scents speak to the British countryside in the most visceral way: the calming lavender and eucalyptus of Relax, the energising lemongrass, ginger and rosemary of Active, the deeply restorative notes of Replenish and Restore. The aim is to create a landscape in a bottle — an ethos that’s been brought to life with new abstract modern designs on our packaging by Finnish illustrator Reeta Ek.
There’s something quietly radical about a British bodycare brand that’s genuinely made in Britain, with British ingredients, for a 2026 audience.
Cowshed feels very rooted in Somerset in both the brand’s origin and its outlook: how does that translate in Soho Houses further afield?
Somerset gives Cowshed its soul, but the feeling it creates is entirely portable. What we’ve always tried to distil isn’t a postcode. It’s a particular quality of ease: that unhurried, warm, slightly untamed sense that somewhere is wildly good to be in. Whether you’re in a Soho House in Istanbul, Los Angeles or Mumbai, reaching for one of our products should feel like a genuine exhale.
There’s a duality at the heart of the brand that travels beautifully: muddy boots, champagne flutes; one foot in the countryside, one in the city. That tension between hedonism and self-care, luxury and the everyday, feels relevant everywhere.
Will Cowshed always be rooted in the English countryside? Any Amalfi collabs or Provençal spin-offs in the brand’s future?
The English countryside is where we come from and, honestly, it’s what makes us interesting. There are plenty of brands doing sun-drenched coastal glamour beautifully. That’s not our story. Cowshed is gloriously, unashamedly British: muddy, characterful, a little wild around the edges. There’s real power in owning that with confidence rather than diluting it.
That said, we’ve always been in conversation with the wider world, through Soho House’s global footprint and through the people who discover us and take us home with them. The roots are firmly in Somerset soil. Where those roots lead next is an exciting prospect.
What’s the secret to Cowshed’s enduring appeal?
We’ve always lived in the same tension our customers do. The world tells you to optimise, fix, improve — Cowshed has always said: just feel good. No rules, no prescriptions about who you should be or how your self-care should look. Just brilliant products, beautiful scents and moments designed to meet you exactly where you are, whether that’s calm, chaotic or somewhere in between.
There’s also something to be said for our refusal to take ourselves too seriously. We’re a spa brand named after a cow shed. We think wellness should be pleasurable, not performative. That irreverence, that warmth, that very particular brand of British wit is built into our DNA.
And then there’s the fragrance. People remember how Cowshed smells. They remember the first time they encountered us in a hotel bathroom. Scent is memory, and we’ve always understood that deeply.
What’s your most popular product?
The Shelfie Set. It captures something so true about how people discover Cowshed: you encounter us in a hotel, fall in love, and then want to recreate that line-up (with the sweet hamper it comes in) on your own shelf at home. Different shower gels for different moods, different moments. One for a restorative Sunday soak, one for a Tuesday morning when you need to feel confident before a huge meeting, one for evenings when only something properly indulgent will do.
What makes Cowshed stand out in a sea of bodycare?
Fragrance, first and always. In a category that often leads with ingredients or claims, being genuinely fragrance-led is a distinctive position. With our relaunch, we’ve significantly increased fragrance levels across everything: stronger scent throw, more atmosphere, more of that glorious feel-good immediacy from the first moment.
Beyond fragrance, it’s the refusal to be precious. We believe in wellness without rules, pleasure found in unexpected places, luxury that isn’t too polished to get its hands dirty. At a time when wellness culture has become almost exhaustingly optimised, we’re offering something more pleasurable, honest and human.
What are the challenges around sustainability for the brand? And what measures do you take?
Sustainability in beauty is a genuine challenge and there are no perfect answers. We’d rather be honest about that than greenwash our way through it. What we can say is that every decision in our relaunch was made with more consideration than before.
Our bottles include 30% post-consumer recycled plastic. Our mono-material plastic pumps can be recycled with the bottle. Disc-top caps use NIR-detectable black ink to support recycling streams. Outer packaging uses FSC-certified boards printed with vegetable inks. And we continue to manufacture in Britain, which matters for supply-chain transparency as much as it does for quality.
Home fragrance is now an important part of the mix: was it hard to make the decision to let people’s homes smell as good as your hotels?
Not hard at all; it felt inevitable. People fall in love with how Cowshed smells in our spaces and of course they want that at home. Home fragrance is something we’ve approached with enormous care in this new era, and there is genuinely more to come in the months and years ahead.
We know how important luxury candles have become. They’re a year-round ritual now, not a seasonal gesture. So, we’ve increased fragrance levels significantly for a richer, more immersive scent from the moment you light them. Every candle now comes with a lid, because a Cowshed candle is too good to keep purely on display. The fragrance does all the talking.
Want to know more about where you can experience Cowshed? Discover our full collection of Soho House hotels