No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. — Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
Hard as it is for us males to get in touch with our senses — our higher, more refined ones, that is; not the baser, beer-tasting ones — Provence’s L’Occitane products for men aim to do just that. With several new bath products available at Rustan’s for the guy who has everything — except a refined nose — L’Occitane is venturing boldly where men’s body care has rarely gone before.
First is Cade, the French term for extract of juniperus oxycedrdus (better known as wild juniper). It’s a facial scrub made from juniper bark that not only exfoliates away those tired old skin cells, it leaves a lingering natural scent that you can’t quite put your finger on, yet it evokes a clean, calm environment miles and miles away from the grit and grime of metro living.
Use Cade Juniper Bark Scrub once or twice a week on the face — “a small quantity of product on damp skin” — and you’ve got a highly advanced pre-shaving system. That’s because the “Cade complex” purifies the skin by controlling the skin’s sebum production and preventing the spread of bacteria. The Cade wood powder exfoliates — you can feel it scrubbing away like a fresh piece of bark — and cleans out pores, preparing the skin for even beard growth. The olive oil derivative also nourishes the skin; there’s no soap which can dry out skin.
And the scent: well, if you’ve ever wanted to feel like a mountain man, enjoying the bounty of nature beside a babbling brook, this is as close as your face may get in Metro Manila. It’s a fresh, woodsy smell, leaving a not-unpleasant tingling on the skin. Proust could write a few thousand pages on it.
Following up on the Cade Juniper Scrub is Cade Youth Concentrate. This light cream is recommended for facial care after shaving: it reinforces the epidermis and fights facial lines. One-third of the men who tested Cade Youth Concentrate reported a noticeable reduction in facial wrinkles. How? Again, the juniper bark “Cade complex” regulates oil flow in the skin, so you get fewer infections. It contains birch sap (an invigorating, firming agent for the skin) and beech bud extract (to stimulate cellular metabolism, reduce the appearance of wrinkles) and silicium (to stimulate collagen synthesis). Most of all, a bit applied to the face and neck every morning and evening reduces signs of aging. And it’s cheaper than buying a Maserati.
L’Occitane is obviously on a nature kick. Their other line for men is based on tea leaves. Thé Blanc is an eau de toilette derived from white tea leaves (hence the name). Actually, they’re fresh tea leaves allowed to unfold and dry in the Provencal sun, resulting in “silver needles” which are then crushed and transformed into the scent. The advantage of Thé Blanc is its woodsy, citrusy scent — it’s not feminine, though not earth-shakingly masculine either. L’Occitane describes a cup of white tea as “a source of both freshness and strength,” and you can believe that, sampling Thé Blanc. It’s slightly bracing, yet also refreshing. And it builds on L’Occitane’s previous Green Tea collection, pointing toward a new direction as tea fragrance specialists.
To add to this, try the White Tea Soap: it’s a light, white bar with the L’Occitane raised engraving, using natural palm oil as a base, so it doesn’t dry the skin. The smell is a little hard to describe, but gaze into a cup of damp tea leaves as Proust once did, and you’ll begin to get the olfactory picture.
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L’Occitane is available at Rustan’s Essenses.