Heritage
A house, in its own words
Cowshed began life in 1998 in a converted cow shed on the grounds of Babington House, a Georgian manor in Somerset that Nick Jones had just opened as his second property after the original Soho House in London's Greek Street. The retreat quickly became a rural counterpart to the Soho House formula, and the building's agricultural past lent the new product line its name. From the start, the bath and body formulas were developed in-house for use in the Babington House spa, then extended to other Soho House locations as the membership club expanded internationally. Over the following two decades, the Cowshed line grew from a treatment-menu exclusive into a standalone retail bodycare and fragrance brand, retaining its Somerset origin story even as distribution widened. A relaunch campaign announced for spring of recent years repositioned the brand toward its British botanical roots, while still holding its connection to the Soho House ecosystem. The seven fragrances catalogued in fragrance reference works today (the seven 'Cow' scents plus earlier spa oils) reflect that slow evolution from single-house amenity to recognized scent label, all under the Soho House parent company registered as the current owner. Cowshed's creative starting point is personality rather than mythology. Where many heritage fragrance houses borrow from perfumery's classical vocabulary of chypres, orientals, and fougères, Cowshed leans into emotional shorthand: Moody, Grumpy, Wild, Lazy, Knackered, Gorgeous, Horny. Each scent is built around a human temperament, inviting wearers to choose a fragrance the way they might choose a mood for the evening. This character-first framing was a natural extension of the brand's spa origins, where treatment menus at Babington House were organized by desired feeling as much as by skin concern. The brand has publicly described its stance as having 'a healthy disregard for wellness rules,' positioning Cowshed against the more prescriptive voices in the natural beauty category. Fragrance is treated as a small daily act of self-expression rather than as a luxury ritual tied to formal occasions, which keeps the line conversational and accessible in tone. The underlying creative vision links scent to place, specifically to the English countryside sensibility of log fires, walled gardens, and country house weekends that defined its first setting.