As we started our mission to create a collection of the best must-haves for a naturally beautiful lifestyle, we knew we needed to find experts deft in using natural ingredients to their most potent powers. By luck and way of a friendly introduction, we found ourselves in a city a few kilometers away from Aix, where we met Beatrix.
A chemist by training and trade, Beatrix left behind industrial chemicals and mass production to now specializes in making truly natural, liquid soap for the hands and body, in a traditional saponification method from Marseille, with generations of heritage.
With over 20 years of expertise, Beatrix created for Bastide liquid hand washes and body washes that not only feel different, but elementally are different, from typical gel-like formulas commonly found on the market. Our soft formula, silky and smooth, is made of 98% ingredients of natural origins – both gentle to your skin AND biodegradable for the environment.
Our natural process is simple... When it comes to our liquid soaps, we abide by the golden rule, “Less is more.”
Our formulas contain less than ten ingredients, including renewable resources such as coconut oil as well as olive oil. Throughout history, olive oil has been the “liquid gold” of Provence and the Mediterranean region, used to cure a large number of illnesses and complications, internal and external. Packed with Vitamin E, this antioxidant revitalizes the skin’s smoothness and slows down the aging process by stimulating skin cells and almost creating a natural shield against UV damage. If that isn’t convincing enough, both ingredients have been widely used in the past to strengthen and heal damaged hair and fingernails.
These quintessential oils are the reason why our soaps add a soft and silky texture that keeps your skin healthy and feeling ageless. Not your typical thick gel-like formula that almost seems to hold its shape on its own in your hand, our formulas are silky and smooth, rich with potent oils from olives and coconut. In exchange for the overwhelming foamy bubbles of childhood baths (derived from detergent-chemicals like Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, which we refuse to include in any of our products alongside the rest of our forbidden blacklist), our natural formulas will not dry out your skin or strip your skin of its natural oils. Instead, it naturally cleanses, gliding away impurities, and leaving behind the most touchable, supple skin.
The secret to Beatrix’s formulation success is almost magical - made in stainless steel cauldrons, our somewhat unorthodox methods of small-batch production is far from the giant industrial bins of chemical soaps. This ancestral technique of saponification is achieved by combining patience with a pursuit of perfection.
The Provence olive oil and coco oils are mixed in with an alkaline potassium compound (historically, soap makers used ashes, so this is our modern upgrade), and the mixture boils for six hours in order to ensure its completion. Once the paste is finalized, we adopt the “just add water” mentality to balance the concentration, creating a perfectly silky, skin loving formula.
Whether we are exploring NYC or looking around our home in Aix-en-Provence, we firmly believe that nature is the most prolific creator of beauty. Beatrix has perfected our signature Bastide liquid hand washes and body washes with unique formulas made of 98% ingredients of natural origins, giving our bodies and the earth lots of love and care. Did we mention they all smell amazing too?
We adore our Beautisans!