“When you’re curious you always try to find things that make sense.”
“There’s a soft and bright light in Aix. So beautiful it kind of makes you feel creative, it makes you want to do something. It makes total sense that so many painters made work there,” Shirin says of Aix-en-Provence.
Aix is home to she and Frédéric’s original “bastide,” their country home, one of their favorite spaces to host family and friends.
In Provence you can expect to discover great tales of beloved artists, special evenings out after dark, or a generation-defying song. The stories that inspire the products of Bastide are no different. Their fragrance Rose Olivier stems, quite literally, from a love story between two unlikely sources. As Shirin remembers it, while Frédéric was enjoying lunch one day he sees a tree that’s in bloom and is enamored by its striking beauty and character. When he inquired, he learned the tree was the result of the love between a rose bush and an olive tree. The rose bush grows into the tree and blooms throughout, and they live together symbiotically for the rest of their lives as they nurture and feed one another. A forever type of love, Bastide’s Rose Olivier marries scents of woodiness and rose.
The rose bush grows into the tree and blooms throughout, and they live together symbiotically for the rest of their lives as they nurture and feed one another.
Authentic origin. Artisanally made. A celebration of the terroir.
“What we’re trying to do is protect as much as possible those small makers who are still making things by hand.” One family business makes all the creams, while one woman makes all the liquid soaps. Tapping into the lineage of craft and expertise, proving experience is truly an incomparable skill set.
“It is really about doing things well you know with clean beauty, but also with people who have been doing it for generations who have small businesses, who want to keep doing it, and so that it doesn’t become this big kind of factory thing.” says Shirin.
No one fragrance in Bastide’s line is a singular entity, they are mixtures of experiences and botanicals that evoke a feeling.
When it comes to scent profiling, for Frédéric “First interaction is the Mediterranean area you know. So Italy, Spain, France, South of France.” All places where he is very familiar with the sights, sounds and stories. “Most of the botanical is from there. And also the experience from there, you know the light, the everything. We have a fragrance called Neroli Lumiere. It’s more than just nerolis. It’s like a really sunny scent from the south of France,” describes Frédéric. “When you’re curious you always try to find things that make sense.” says Frédéric.
These tales of love come so naturally.