Ten or eleven years ago my nose and my eyes fell in love, head over heels. Not with each other, but with L'Occitane.
(If you know L'Occitane, it needs no introduction; if you don't know L'Occitane, go and find out about it.)
During the first five or six years of the century this company successfully competed with the Diors and Chanels and Givenchys of this world, and provided most of my gifts for the people I loved the most (and that includes myself). If you ever needed a last-minute gift, you could dash into L'Occitane's store and grab literally anything off the shelves - and it would be a hit with the recipient (male or female, young or old, rich or not). Try that with Dior or Chanel or Givenchy!
But then, around four or five years ago, something began to change.
I think it all began precisely when they realised that - up to a certain point - they really could compete with the Diors and the Chanels and the Givenchys, certainly for the clientele that wanted excitingly pristine, fresh, genuinely good fragrances - and for much less money. Exquisitely crafted, elegantly unpretentious yet naturally complex, exhilarating fragrances that smelled like concentrates of the true scents of nature. They were - almost literally - a breath of fresh air. They mimicked the fresh air - and the richness - of nature, and they did it very well. Fragrances in elegantly simple, seemingly old fashioned containers, with equally old-fashioned labels that said vervaine, lavande, fleur d'oranger - simple, beautiful words that meant verbena, lavender, orange blossom; because that's precisely what was inside.
True, not all of their labels were so straightforward or laconic in their description of the contents. Some were deliciously historic - like the Eau des Quatre Voleurs, the name of which referred to the (very famous) four thieves who, so the story goes, robbed houses during the time of plague.
I bought their Eau des Quatre Voleurs for my brother, for his birthday, almost ten years ago now. He loved it.
A year later I had to buy again.
Another year later I could not buy it, because I went away, and where I went there were no L'Occitane stores.
Then I returned to "civilisation". During the voyage back, on a ship deck, a woman nearby was rummaging through her necessaire, and I caught a glimpse of a boxy bottle with that beloved label in block letters: L'OCCITANE. I swear, it almost brought tears to my eyes.
But when I actually entered a L'Occitane store (and then another one) and happily browsed through their inventory - already missing some of my old favourites - I got the impression that something wasn't quite as I remembered it.
I could not put my finger on it - the stores were still little heavens of visual and olfactory bliss, the bottles and boxes were still extremely tempting - but it was not unlike that odd, elusive moment when the most glorious sunset you could possibly imagine suddenly loses a key element of its light. Everything looks exactly the same... yet somehow flat, faded. The full glory of its light is there no more. It is beautiful, but no longer dazzling; it is no longer interesting. Something is off.
Stores and commercial products in general do not usually evoke in me comparisons with sunsets or the glory of nature.
Well, apparently L'Occitane does. Or did.
But after today's visit to L'Occitane I think the time has come to voice my concerns, before the sun goes down altogether on this heavenly-scented little oasis of refined and solid artisanerie among the ocean-worth of plastic pink flamingoes: the sadly trivial, bubble-gummy, homogenised and sterilised world of treacly-fruity "celebrity fragrances" and their more venerable but no less "trendy" haute-couture fragrances.
Trendy. That was the word I've been trying to spit out for the past ten minutes.
L'Occitane used to be Nature, only more so.
Now they are leaning towards Annick Goutal, only less so.
Who wants a green tea and jasmin fragrance?
I am sure some do; I don't. None of my friends do. Judging by the few reviews I've been able to find, not very many people do.
I want jasmin, pure and simple, with that drop of lemon that brings out all its glory. I do not want to smell like a cup of jasmin-scented green tea; I don't even like to drink it, much less wear it.
I don't want colognes with top, middle and base notes. For that, I have Dior and Chanel and Givenchy. I want a fragrant water that smells like what it says on the bottle. I want a pure lavender water that smells like pure lavender because it is pure lavender and it says so on the bottle - not something called "Blue Harvest"; I want linden-blossom ironing water (a favourite gift of an aunt of mine) that smells like linden blossom ironing water and comes in a big bottle that says linden-blossom ironing water.
But it's not (only) the fragrances - especially the missing ones, old favourites that have been mindlessly discontinued - what prompted this outburst.
Everything seems to have been infected by a certain "trendiness".
I loved - loved! - the various complexion-enhancing coloured baumes, packed in adorably unpretentious little metal containers. I think they came in one or two, maybe three colours. (called, very simply, rose, coral, no-nonsense names). That was all that I - or the grateful recipients of this gift - ever needed or wanted. And they were fabulous for the skin. It positively glowed, but nobody could ever guess that the glow came in a little metal box.
I have been trying to find them. I couldn't. I was shown an array of rouges and lipsticks (?!) and eye-shadows and what-not, all packed like every other rouge or lipstick or what-not in the world of commercial cosmetics. Red and girly and each one with its own fancy name... Maybelline, only less so.
Originally, they were unique; they already had "arrived", right from the start.
Now they are starting to look aspirational.
Not a good place to be after 35 years in business - most of which had been a brilliant success.
Do you know how you recognise true nobility?
Sadly, I am not convinced the management pundits of L'Occitane do - not anymore.
But I do.
True nobility has a few distinctive hallmarks that cannot be faked, much less bought. Theese have various names and descriptions, some more florid or accurate than others, but if you strip them all down to the core, you will discover that their common essence is GENUINITY. Lack of pretension.
Stick to your original guns, L'Occitane. Those were good, solid, trustworthy guns; and they had a long range.
Remember: money does smell. And it's not a pretty smell.
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