A body wash collection, a three-time All-Star, and the case that fragrance is part of an athlete’s pregame ritual.

Dove Men+Care has built its U.S. reputation on one credential: it’s the brand dermatologists recommend most for men’s body wash. This month, that credential gets a new face. The brand has partnered with NBA center Karl-Anthony Towns to front its Plant-Powered Body Wash collection — a campaign that follows Towns from the training facility to the red carpet, treating the shower less like a chore and more like the first move in a longer game plan.

The Collection

The Plant-Powered Body Wash line is formulated with plant-based moisturizers and natural essential oils, positioned as a fragrance-forward alternative within a category that has historically treated scent as an afterthought. The collection is available nationwide through Walmart, Amazon, and Target, alongside Dove’s own online storefront — placement that puts it in the same aisle reach as the brand’s decade-plus run since Dove Men+Care launched in 2010.

Towns as the Face

The campaign doesn’t lean on highlight reels. Instead, it tracks Towns through the parts of his day that don’t make it to a box score: training, recovery, time with family, moments in the community. The through-line is ritual — the idea that how a man starts his day, specifically the five minutes in the shower, sets the tone for the eighteen hours that follow.

Towns has described fragrance as part of his focus — the detail that helps him settle in and set the energy he wants to carry through the day. It’s a small claim, but it’s the one Dove Men+Care is building the entire campaign around: that scent is not a finishing touch, it’s a functional part of a man’s routine.

Why It Works

Jake Hirsch, who heads Dove Men+Care in the U.S., framed the partnership as a natural fit — an athlete whose on- and off-court energy mirrors what the brand wants fragrance to represent for the everyday man. It’s a pairing built on category logic as much as star power: Towns is a three-time NBA All-Star, and Dove Men+Care is the No. 1 dermatologist-recommended men’s body wash brand in the country. Two credentialed names, one shared claim about confidence.

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t Dove Men+Care’s first time in Towns’ corner — the two have worked together before, part of a broader pattern of the brand building season-long relationships with cultural figures rather than one-off endorsement deals. It also lands the same year Dove Men+Care is running a global platform tied to the FIFA World Cup 2026, where Towns appears alongside a wider roster of sports and entertainment names. Read together, the throughline is consistent: Dove Men+Care is positioning grooming as something men do for performance, not instead of it.

For LUSH’s Modern Gentleman readers, the campaign is a useful data point on where men’s grooming marketing is headed — fewer claims about masculinity, more emphasis on ritual, recovery, and the specific plant-based formulation doing the work in the bottle.

Photo courtesy of Dove Men+Care.

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