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1 review in English

  • Review from Devyn G.

    Photo of Devyn G.
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    • 47 friends
    • 60 reviews

    Toronto, ON

    5.0 star rating
    3/22/2010 1 photo

    Ever discover a new place (for you) and feel the need to tell everyone you know about it because it's just that good, that cool, that unique, that superior?

    Olivier in St. Jacobs.  And yes, they sell online.

    A "community-based, family-owned company that handcrafts olive oil and other pure ingredients into extraordinary skin care products... created with kindness and respect for our bodies and our planet," Olivier blew my partner and me away the moment we passed through the rustic foyer and were cascaded with the scents inside.  We walked in expecting to, maybe, buy a soap.  Quaint, lovely, charming.  

    But we walked out with much more, including an education and perhaps even a new friend.  We returned later in the day to attend one of their free and open workshops where we were introduced to Olivier's unique and so liberatingly common-sense soap-making process.  Such demonstrations are offered weekly, in English or French,  and can also be booked for private events.  

    "A museum, a library, an art gallery, a boutique, and an entertaining show" is a more than apt description for experiencing the shop itself. We learned about the chemical additives that virtually all commercial skincare producers use that you wouldn't dare touch. We beamed to learn their philosophy that if you wouldn't put a skincare product into your mouth, you shouldn't put it on to your body.   We enjoyed watching children fashion their own scented bath salts.  The fruit-scented soaps made us hungry.  The spice-scented skin creams made us frisky.  The robust products for men had me feeling as though I should be in a rustic Teutonic parlour with a pipe full of heady rum tobacco and a roaring fire behind me.

    I'm a sensual guy, but truth be told, I'm not really one who usually finds himself drawn to something like a skincare product.  Usually, I shave with Irish Spring soap and don't even bother with lip balm in even the harshest winter.  But if I were standing with you at your computer right now, this moment, I'd be opening up their webpage for you.

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