Coco de Mer

Coco de Mer is a London luxury brand selling lingerie alongside sex toys and erotic accessories, founded in 2001 by Sam Roddick, daughter of The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick. Its first shop opened on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden at the end of that year, and the business has since passed through two owners and turned 25 in 2026.

The premise was a shop for adult products that looked and felt like a luxury boutique. In 2001 that was an unusual idea in Britain, where sex shops were still mostly blacked-out windows on side streets.

Monmouth Street, December 2001

Roddick named the business after the coco de mer, the palm of the Seychelles that produces the largest seed in the world, a double-lobed nut whose shape has made it a botanical joke for centuries. The launch was hosted by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, with marketing help from Saatchi and Saatchi.

The Monmouth Street shop put lingerie, toys and erotic accessories under one roof, in a room dressed like a private club rather than a back-street store. Roddick, born in 1971 and raised around her mother's campaigning company, framed it in political terms. Pleasure was presented as part of a healthy life, and the shop as a place for women in particular to buy it without shame.

A trademark fight with Chanel

The name caused trouble. In 2004 Chanel opposed the registration of the Coco de Mer trademark, citing the similarity of the names and of the product ranges. The episode is a footnote now, but it shows how quickly the shop had moved into the territory of luxury fashion rather than adult retail.

Roddick's activism and the Lovehoney sale

Coco de Mer arrived in the same London moment as Agent Provocateur, founded in Soho in 1994 by Joseph Corre and Serena Rees. Both made erotic lingerie a high-street-adjacent luxury product. Where Agent Provocateur was fashion first, Coco de Mer was a sexual-wellness shop that happened to make very good lingerie.

Roddick used the platform for campaigning. In 2008 she set up Bondage for Freedom, an activist project on human rights, sex trafficking and environmental causes. In November 2011 she sold Coco de Mer to Lovehoney, the Bath-based online sex-toy company.

Lucy Litwack and the 2017 buyout

Lovehoney appointed Lucy Litwack managing director in April 2014. Litwack came from the lingerie trade, with director roles at La Perla, Bendon and Victoria's Secret, and she had developed the David Beckham Bodywear line. In June 2017 she led a management buyout reported at 5 million pounds, backed by a Swiss investor, and became owner and chief executive.

Her plan pushed the brand harder toward lingerie and international sales. Pamela Anderson was announced as a brand ambassador, and wholesale accounts at the time included Selfridges, Matchesfashion and ASOS. Later projects brought in names such as Julia Restoin Roitfeld, who fronted a Coco de Mer holiday edit in 2020.

What Coco de Mer makes

The lingerie is the most visible part of the business: sheer tulle and lace sets, bodies, robes and slips, sold at prices that put it beside the London luxury labels rather than the sex-shop trade. Pieces are designed as statement lingerie, made to be seen, and the brand photographs them that way.

The other side of the business is pleasure products. According to Litwack, toys and what the brand calls intimate play make up about 35 percent of sales. Coco de Mer also runs salons, evening talks on sex and erotic culture, which continue the educational idea Roddick started with.

From shop floor to private salon

In 2023 the Covent Garden boutique closed after more than 20 years, and Coco de Mer described itself as a digital-first business. It moved design, wholesale, online sales and marketing under one roof in Primrose Hill, north London, where it also opened an appointment-only shopping space with Murano glass chandeliers and red velvet seating. Fittings there are offered to individuals, couples and small groups.

Litwack runs the company with an all-female head-office team and works only with women photographers and crews on shoots. In its 25th year, the company that began with a palm seed and a Covent Garden shopfront now sells mainly online, with a private room in Primrose Hill as its showroom.

Last updated October 7, 2026