L’Occitane pays homage to the capital of perfumery

L’Occitane founder Olivier Baussan must be at least 60 years old (born in 1952), but he looks so young and dynamic that my first thought upon meeting him was, “L’Occitane’s anti-aging products really work!”

We’re in Grasse, Provence, which is about an hour away from Baussan’s home and L’Occitane headquarters in Manosque, but the fragrant town plays a crucial role in the company’s latest release: La Collection de Grasse, a line of four fragrances that pays tribute to France’s perfume capital — Jasmin & Bergamote, Thé Vert & Bigarade, Magnolia & Mure and Vanille & Narcisse.

“I’ve been working with Grasse perfumers for 36 years,” says Baussan. “L’Occitane is an ambassador of Provence, but more of Haute-Provence — higher Provence — where some of the plants that you have in the product lines like verbena and lavender are what we call ‘simple,’ more rustic plants, and it’s the Provence that’s more inland. This was to pay homage to the Provence turned towards the sea, so it was really this desire to get these two Provences close together, and pay homage to the capital of perfumery.”

La Collection de Grasse is a milestone for the company for two reasons. One is that L’Occitane has hired its first in-house perfumer to create it: Karine Dubreuil, a young, vibrant female nose from Provence who’s known for luminous compositions like Thierry Mugler’s Womanity and L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Mure et Musc Extreme. (More on Dubreuil and the collection in an upcoming article.)

“We chose Karine mainly because of her passion for noble, pure and raw ingredients,” Baussan says. “She doesn’t like working with synthetic ingredients, so that was really a strong connection.”

Secondly, up until now L’Occitane has usually highlighted single ingredients in its fragrances, like the rose in Rose 4 Reines that Dubreuil composed for the house in 2004. La Collection de Grasse marks the first time L’Occitane is mixing two ingredients in a fragrance, so it’s a different approach, according to Baussan.

“Karine worked on the structure of the fragrance and I worked on the packaging itself, so it was a union of these two universes,” he says. “And what we really wanted to show was the marriage of these ingredients, at the same time in the packaging and in the fragrance itself. It’s a poetic union.”

The wonderfully transparent yet nuanced scents are contained in heavy glass bottles that are beautiful in their simplicity. Embossed on the black caps and in the glass on the front is a curious symbol: the ampersand.

Baussan explains by recalling a trip to Grasse a few years ago when perfumers there were doing a lot of distillations — of jasmine, in particular — and all the fragrances during that time would actually mix and mingle in the street. “So I wanted to really symbolize and represent this union, and I did it through a sign, the ampersand,” he explains. “In French it’s called esperluette and was actually considered the 27th letter of the Provençal alphabet. This letter stands for ‘and,’ so this sign is a way to link two things together.”

In a scent like Vanille & Narcisse, for example, you have vanilla, which is not indigenous to Provence but comes from Madagascar, and then you have a flower like narcissus, which is actually grown in Grasse. “So it’s really the union of these faraway worlds with Provence.”

L’OCCITANE INNOVATIONS

The next day we visit L’Occitane’s laboratory and factory in Manosque, where we meet research and development group scientific director Jean-Louis Pierrisnard, the man responsible for developing L’Occitane’s first face- and body-care products, including the initial shea butter range.

Pierrisnard leads us to a room where a new product is in its final stages of testing: a BB cream done the L’Occitane way, infused with one of the brand’s signature ingredients — angelica — prized for its hydrating properties. “It will be available in two shades: light and medium,” says Pierrisnard, who informs us that they do clinical trials for efficacy on every product and they never test on animals.

The R&D director is particularly proud of L’Occitane’s numerous patents, especially those relating to the immortelle flowers they discovered on the island of Corsica, off the French coast. Thanks to its anti-aging, anti-inflammatory qualities, the flower has become the basis for L’Occitane’s phenomenally successful Immortelle skincare range, in particular the Crème Divine that is a favorite among beauty insiders.

SPA L’OCCITANE

The Immortelle range is used extensively in the facials offered by the Spa L’Occitane in Le Couvent des Minimes, a 17th-century convent that has been converted to a five-star hotel and spa in Mane, a town in the heart of Haute-Provence.

For those in search of pampering and well-being, there isn’t a better introduction to L’Occitane’s star products than the Immortelle Divine Secret to Everlasting Youth, a 90-minute facial, the Shea Nourishing Comfort treatment or the Hot & Cold Citrus-Verbena, a hot body scrub coupled with deep body massage.

After a treatment you drink tea in a room overlooking an idyllic slice of the Provençal countryside. There’s a chateau in the distance, an abundance of trees and maybe even a white horse roaming freely. No wonder so many people fall permanently in love with Provence.

Nearby is the Ecomusée l’Olivier, a museum Baussan built to glorify another passion: olive oil. Attached to the museum is a vegetarian restaurant run by two of Olivier’s friends, and Premiere Provence Pression, a Provençal grocery where you can buy dozens of differently flavored olive oils from the local growers pictured on the walls, as well as local delicacies and beauty products.

Food is another Baussan interest. He’s friends with chefs like Jacques Chibois of the stunningly beautiful hotel La Bastide Saint Antoine in Grasse (who’s earned two Michelin stars for his regional cuisine and happens to bottle his own olive oil as well), and has opened La Table O&CO, a market-cum-restaurant concept in the United States.

L’Occitane’s Asian distributors have also opened L’Occitane cafés in Japan and Taiwan. Though Baussan and the mother company are not directly involved in their menus and day-to-day operations, the cafés offer Mediterranean dishes in line with L’Occitane’s image and philosophy.

The ‘Ambassador’ of provence

As if L’Occitane’s presence doesn’t stretch out long enough over Haute-Provence, the company also sponsors France Montgolfieres, a hot air balloon company that offers tourists hour-long rides over Provence’s lush green fields (lavender fields if you’re lucky and go in summertime). Once the balloons are inflated they display the L’Occitane en Provence logo all over the countryside — a premier tourism attraction, yes, but also a feat of clever advertising.

Baussan himself could well be the ambassador of Provence. When he started selling essential oils of lavender and rosemary at Provençal markets in 1976, little did he envision that his small scent outfit would become a global empire spanning over 2,200 stores in more than 90 countries, with a turnover of 913 million euros.

“From the start I wanted to build a respectful relationship between man and his environment, and that’s what people call ‘sustainable development’ today,” says Baussan, who claims that lavender is still his favorite scent. “It’s a strong philosophy today but when L’Occitane started 36 years ago, we didn’t use those words.”

Though the company is ready to enter the BB cream market, Baussan says they have no plans of jumping on the argan oil bandwagon.

“When we started in 1980 with something very close, the shea butter nut, L’Occitane was the first one to do it,” he notes. “Since then, a lot of companies have jumped on board, L’Oreal included, and put shea butter in their products as well. So a lot of companies said, ‘Now everybody does it, let’s move on to something else.’ But I say no. We have now 14,000 people economically reliant on the production of shea butter, so we’re not going to suddenly move to something else. We’re going to keep on supporting it. Argan is very close to shea butter in the properties: it’s for dry skin, it’s a hydrating product, so why divide the story in two and develop a new line? They’ve created something we already have.”

Now that businessman Reinold Geiger has taken control of L’Occitane as company president, Baussan can devote himself to more aesthetic pursuits as artistic director. He says what he enjoys most is to tell a product’s story through poetry; Taiwanese artist Chin-san Long is a huge influence, and so is Avignon poet Rene Char.

“Here’s a piece of a poem by a contemporary poet who lived near Avignon. It really sums up the Provence I love: ‘In my land, in Provence, in the way the soft, tender proofs of spring coming, and in the way badly dressed birds and simple things are preferred.’

“It really translates the way we like looking at the landscape around, with a very simple, bare vision of what it is. What is important to me is that you feel the poetic message in the product and also the historical message of the brand.”

(To be continued)

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L’Occitane is available at L’Occitane boutiques in Power Plant Mall, Rustan’s Makati-Glorietta 4, Rustan’s Tower-Shangri-La Plaza Mall, NAIA Terminal 1, Rustan’s Alabang, Marrionaud SM Mall of Asia, and TriNoma Mall.

La Collection de Grasse will be available in July.