Fashionista Street: Provence Dans Tous Les Sens

A visually impaired teen follows her nose to a lavender field in Provence for L’Occitane’s perfume school, Provence dans tous les sens (Provence in every sense). [Source: AFB]I’ve never wished to be a teenager again. I’m happy as an old geezer knowing what I know now. If I were 16, though, I’d jump on this opportunity to follow my nose to Provence.

The AFB Blog announces: “AFB and French beauty company L’Occitane are teaming up again to send four visually impaired teenagers to L’Occitane’s perfume school, Provence dans tous les sens (Provence in every sense). The program is a magical experience that gives students the opportunity to visit lavender fields, learn how soaps, perfumes, and other products are made, and practice their Bonjours, Mercis, and S’il Vous Plaîts. If you know any 14-, 15-, or 16-year-olds interested in fragrance design, please encourage them to apply! Applications must be submitted by April 21.” Read more.

Here’s how L’Occitane came to this venture:

Braille — Detectable only by touch, small discreet dots are found on many of our labels.

L’OCCITANE has always sought to make its products available to a broad spectrum of the population and the blind represent a category of people for whom access to consumer goods is often very difficult. Using Braille on our products represents an obvious step towards improvement: this allows the blind and poor-sighted to make informed choices.

Inspired by this, L’OCCITANE employees created an association, ‘Provence dans tous les Sens’ (‘All the senses of Provence’).
This school is designed to introduce blind and poor-sighted children and adolescents to the world of perfume. By sharing the fascinating world of perfumes, the institution aims to help the development of these young people’s olfactory senses, and possibly inspire future careers.

L’OCCITANE is the 2000 AFB Access Award winner and proudly sponsors a contest to send visually impaired students to our Perfume school in Provence.

Follow your senses to Fashionista Street: The Perfect Scent and learn how Chandler Burr landed the perfect nose job. He is NYT scent critic, the first of a kind, and he got there by writing a long New Yorker story called The Scent of the Nile. Nice work if you can get it. His book is The Perfect Scent.

This entry was posted in blind, fashionista, France, sense and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.