{"id":565706,"date":"2026-07-29T19:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/565706\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T19:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:29:08","slug":"home-office-tour-kate-mcleod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/565706\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Office Tour: Kate McLeod"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kate McLeod, the founder behind the cult body-care brand that bears her name, didn\u2019t set out to build a beauty brand. Her path wound through finance, pastry school and yoga teaching before a piece of cocoa butter, pressed into her palm by her late sister-in-law, changed the course of her life\u2014and her career. Now best known for The Body Stone<\/a>\u2014a solid, delectable chunk of cocoa butter that has become a staple in bathrooms across the globe, McLeod\u2019s brand is thriving\u2014and much of the magic is cooked up right from within the walls of her Chelsea home. <\/p>\n

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Below, McLeod takes us inside her sun-drenched New York City office where she dreams up new products, takes client calls over cacao, and keeps herself\u2014quite literally\u2014surrounded by stones.<\/p>\n

A Room Built On Grounding<\/p>\n

Unlike the rest of her home, which she describes as intentionally dark and cave-like, McLeod\u2019s office is the lightest room in the house. \u201cI\u2019m a cancer, and I am a true crab. I absolutely love my nest,\u201d she says, explaining that the space still needed to reflect the same sense of groundedness she chases everywhere else. \u201cI wanted to spend my day in a room that felt light and ethereal and uplifting and open to that creative energy,\u201d she says. \u201cLighting to me is absolutely everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as the clarity of light was intentional, so is every object within the space. The room\u2019s shelving system was built specifically to keep her surrounded by reference points that she treats as working inspiration. \u201cI really wanted shelves because I wanted to be surrounded by things that just grounded me and also let touchpoints of different things in my life.\u201d <\/p>\n

Those shelves are filled with mementos from her travels\u2014including small eggs collected on a trip to visit the Temple of Isis in Egypt\u2014alongside stones, beaded bracelets made by her children and rotating seasonal collections, all of which serve as creative inspiration. \u201cCookbooks, cookbooks everywhere,\u201d she states, pointing to a lifetime spent collecting them from South Africa, Australia and small European restaurants. \u201cI\u2019m overrun with cookbooks.\u201d The effect is the culmination of a space that functions like a mood board she lives inside, one she can pull from when she\u2019s developing new products or thinking through the brand\u2019s direction. <\/p>\n

Her shelves also hold the books that shaped her: Broken Open<\/a> by Elizabeth Lesser, The Road Less Traveled<\/a> by M. Scott Peck and The Untethered Soul<\/a>. \u201cThe first book I was ever given where I was really like, wow, is Broken Open,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve given this to so many friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tucked among the wood and stone throughout the airy space are lighter touches: a wallpaper mural that turns one wall into a piece of art, wooden boxes filled with her children\u2019s school projects\u2014including her daughter Margaux\u2019s papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 beehive\u2014and a small pink ceramic object that reads, simply, \u201cDon\u2019t do the same shit this year.\u201d \u201cI look at it all the time,\u201d McLeod says. \u201cIt\u2019s a great reminder.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Unique Story Behind Her Desk<\/p>\n

McLeod\u2019s desk was custom-made by upstate New York woodworking company Sawkill<\/a>, and it holds three inlays that trace the emotional architecture of her brand. The first is her company logo\u2014a figure in tree pose formed from the letters of \u201cKali,\u201d the Hindu goddess of raw feminine power. \u201cI believe the way we charge up that feminine energy is by taking care of ourselves,\u201d McLeod explains. \u201cThe practice of the body stone to me is actually the practice of coming back, connecting, finding home with yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second inlay is a hummingbird, a tribute to her late sister-in-law who first put a piece of cocoa butter in her hands on a family vacation in Nantucket. \u201cWe lost her later that same year to cancer,\u201d McLeod says. \u201cOur family\u2019s thought is that whenever we see a hummingbird, it\u2019s Deb\u2026 I don\u2019t think any person has had a greater impact on the trajectory of my life.\u201d The third is a small deer. \u201cWhen I am really, really happy and relaxed and in my body, my husband once observed that I tend to prance when I dance\u201d\u2014which is how she ended up with the nickname Prancer.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on the desk, sage and sweetgrass sit ready for burning (\u201csweetgrass can call in the positive\u201d), alongside a small dish of tiny heart-shaped stones she hands out to friends going through hard days. \u201cI guess it\u2019s kind of like a calling card,\u201d she says, \u201cbut more just like I really want to leave you with a little bit of love and a token to remember to come back to that love for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Unusual Place Where The Body Stone Began<\/p>\n

McLeod\u2019s kitchen\u2014an extension of her home office and just as central to how she runs the business\u2014is where The Body Stone itself was invented and where she still often develops new formulas today [she has since moved homes from the birthplace of the original formulation]. \u201cI always have a few chocolate molds around because I used to make all my own chocolate,\u201d she says. Her pastry background gave her both the technique and the tools she used to land on a workable formula: melting raw cocoa butter down in a double boiler, the same way she once tempered chocolate, and blending in oils. \u201cThat was where the body stone was born.\u201d<\/p>\n

That same resourcefulness shaped the brand\u2019s packaging and, by extension, its identity in the market. Unable to find a manufacturer willing to work in small batches, McLeod wrapped early units of the body stone in cheesecloth\u2014a decision that became a signature element of her product and paved the way for how the product is still presented to this day. \u201cYou wrap something up that is sacred,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more sacred than the process, the ritual, the practice of coming home to yourself.\u201d The bamboo canisters came from a similar instinct, inspired by a salt tin on her windowsill. \u201cBamboo repels water, and it also has airflow,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s going to keep it cool and protected.\u201d <\/p>\n

Rather than working from behind her desk all day, McLeod takes nearly all of her meetings at the kitchen counter or from a window bench seat she had extended shortly after moving in\u2014a setup she credits with making her more present and effective with her team and clients. \u201cI love to sit and connect with someone,\u201d she says. \u201cI love sharing a cup of cacao.\u201d Caffeine-free for six years, she instead blends bone broth, dates and cacao each morning, a ritual she says keeps her energy steady through back-to-back conversations without the crash. \u201cIt just gives you this light, buzzy, open, connective feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her cupboards double as a mini shop of her own products, including the brand\u2019s insect-repelling moisturizer and its intimacy-focused Sex Stone<\/a>, both of which she keeps on hand to give away. \u201cI basically have a store inside my house,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

How She Built Something From Nothing<\/p>\n

Asked who has influenced her most, McLeod points to her husband, Hinge founder Justin McLeod, whose early struggles with the dating app shaped how she thinks about her own business. \u201cHinge was failing, failing, failing, failing,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe thing about him\u2026 is that a business, a relationship, if you keep showing up, if you keep putting something into it, it\u2019s love. Love is a choice. You have to nourish it.\u201d That philosophy, she says, runs straight through her own work\u2014a body-care ritual built not around glamour but around the simple, repeated act of taking care of yourself. <\/p>\n

CREDIT
Photography: Henry Hargreaves
Art Direction and Design: Jeehae Joy Hwang
Video: Andr\u00e9 Heizer, Ivan Clow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kate McLeod, the founder behind the cult body-care brand that bears her name, didn\u2019t set out to build…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[90222,201762,146,85,46,256194],"class_list":["post-565706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-nbsp","tag-quot","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-unusual-place-where-the-body-stone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}