L'Occitane en Provence is now coming to St. Pancras International station

I was recently in St. Pancras International station: - regrettably, I had to attend to a business engagement in London.  Tee hee!  When I was there, I noticed that L'Occitane en Provence is opening a store in the station on the 20th of March (two days' time at the time of writing).  I thought I would educate my readers about this chainstore, which seeks to bring the finesse of Provençale culture to the rest of the world.  Given Eurostar's plans to offer direct services to Marseille next year, I am hoping that Provençal tourism authorities and Eurostar will use this opportunity to tie up with L'Occitane en Provence to promote the area as a tourist destination, perhaps in the St. Pancras International branch.

Me personally, I don't tend to buy from them unless I am buying a cheaper alternative for a business client as a present if the person in question is too unsophisticated to know the difference between this and the highest quality stuff.  Sometimes, this has been necessary, on account of not finding out in advance of my arrival in the UK that I plan to visit the people in question.  In terms of what I personally use, I will spend whatever money is necessary to get the finest hand-crafted products locally in Marseille: - I'm the bee's knees (meaning that nothing but the best will do for me) and I must always look my best.  However, this doesn't mean that L'Occitane en Provence's products are poor quality: - it just means they aren't right at the very top of the quality scale, MDR.

If, for whatever reason, one is not able to travel to Marseille to buy the finest quality local handmade products and one doesn't want to do mail order, then I just adore going to L'Occitane en Provence.  When I lived in London, I sometimes had to do this.  Sometimes, I was working very long hours (despite my instincts as a Frenchwoman that efficiency was more important) and didn't have the time to travel to Marseille.  Under such circumstances, my parents would often send beauty products to me by post, but sometimes things didn't arrive and sometimes I was away overnight (e.g. attending post-show fashion show parties) and therefore unable to pick up the packages as normal.

A Frenchwoman just adores verbena perfume from Provence!  As Mireille Guiliano said, "French women know one can go far with a great haircut, a bottle of champagne and a divine perfume".  Verbena perfume is exactly that: - divine (in the non-religious sense of the word).  The aforementioned woman also correctly said that we would never forget to dress up, even for taking out the rubbish: - added to my list of things to never forget would be my verbena perfume.  Mireille also advises caution about which perfumes to use in which circumstances: - of course, all this is second-nature to a sophisticated Frenchwoman such as myself.

I would also never be without Savon de Marseille, one of the things that make Marseille so sophisticated and without equal.  As L'Occitane en Provence explains, there are several criteria that soap must fulfil in order to receive the classification "Savon de Marseille", most notably 72% of the content being olive oil.  L'Occitane en Provence sells something vaguely related under its "Bonne Mère" label, though they have craftily worded some of the variants as "Bonne Mère Marseille Soap", presumably to get around the fact that it doesn't fulfil the criteria for Savon de Marseille.  I have no doubt that this is an attempt to dress an industrial product up as a small-scale hand-made product.  This is exactly what is done with Bonne Maman products: - they use packaging and a name to create this image, but the image they create is decidedly phoney.  If one wants to find the real thing, one should visit various provençale market towns.

I have a whole list of toiletries that I would not like to be without.  This is one of my reasons for my continued enthusiasm for travelling by train: - I like to have all my luggage with me and there are extreme restrictions on the quantities of liquids that can be taken aboard a plane!  Carrying around her lipsticks, perfumes, soap, shampoo, conditioner etc around with her is one of the ways in which dainty Frenchwomen such as myself get passive exercise that helps keep us dainty: - we don't drive around everywhere and keep them in the "trunk" (an American corruption of "boot").

In summary, L'Occitane en Provence's St. Pancras International branch will not sell things that are good enough quality and stylish enough for me, but I hope it will help bring Marseille and the provençale culture to the uneducated masses and inform them about Marseille (and indeed the whole of Provence) as a tourist destination.  Tee hee!