PROVENCE SANTÉ • FRANCE

In the south of France, where endless fields of lavender fill the air with fragrance, Provence Santé has earned a reputation among connoisseurs for this superb collection of authentic Provençal bath products.

According to people close to the source, the founding fathers of Baudelaire spent a past lifetime growing lavender together in France—undoubtedly in the Provence region. Probably they intended to do the same thing this time around but ended up being born American wise guys instead. Go figure. Fortunately for them, in the course of human events, they discovered a small family company making exquisite soaps and bath products in the south of France, right near those very same lavender fields.

Is that karma, or what?

Now, these luxurious soaps and bath products have become wildly popular with everyone from chic urban masses to suburban families with 2.5 kids to old hippies still living off the land (with a little help from a trust fund, suv, and tangerine-hued computer, of course). Is it the pure vegetable base? The soothing karité butter? The beautiful, natural colors? Yes, yes, and yes, but mostly it’s the authentic Provencial fragrances, the same fragrances that led our very own muse, Charles Baudelaire, to write

Long let me inhale,
deeply the odor of your hair,
into it plunge the whole of my face,
as a thirsty man into the water of a spring,
and wave it in my fingers like
a scented handkerchief, to
shake the memories into the air.