Beauty Bible Loves... L'OCCITANE Immortelle Divine Harmony skincare

Once upon a time, L’OCCITANE was best known as a bath, body and toiletries brand. Then, one momentous day, they entered an immortelle-powered cream – Divine Cream – to the Beauty Bible Awards. It became the highest-scoring ‘miracle’ cream we’d ever had, in all our years of testing.

Cleverly, so far as we’re concerned, L’OCCITANE jumped on this and promoted Divine Cream and our testers’ in-depth comments (from having trialled the product over a period of months), in all their stores around the world. Jo even flew to New York to do some in-store promo appearances, and made a film in Corsica with them about the ingredient immortelle, following its journey to the factory in Provence, with an interview with founder Olivier Bausson the icing on the gateau.

And something happened. From that moment on, L’OCCITANE were taken seriously, not just for making gorgeous, fragrant, layerable products for the body – but as a skincare powerhouse. Since then, many different immortelle-based products have scooped Beauty Bible Awards, and we’re personally massive fans.

And now, this. Unquestionably the most luxurious skin duo that the brand has ever launched (gulp) – but quite extraordinarily pleasurable to use, and after just a couple of weeks, most definitely delivering smoother, softer skin, a compliment-magnet glow, and yes, definitely a reduction in fine lines.

There’s a pair of powerful actives, here – something called Immortelle Millésimée (a turbo-charged extract from that immortella plant), and Jania rubens, a rare red algae. Textures are lush – honestly, a drop of Immortelle Harmony Serum does the job from brow to décolletage (um, which is just as well), while Immortelle Harmony Cream is rich yet light and almost bouncy. Absolute bliss to use, actually.

And we’ll just say this: it is way, way more than we’d normally spend on skincare – but we would save for this, and probably WILL save for this, when supplies run dry. (The cream does have a slightly less expensive refill, NB.)

We sort of wish we were currently doing Beauty Bible testing to put these through their paces with a wider, discerning audience – but that’s very much on hold.

So you’ll just have to take our word for it – and accept that we’re seriously impressed.

Immortelle Harmony Cream/£145 for 50ml – buy here

Immortelle Harmony Cream Refill/£125 for 50ml – buy here

Immortelle Harmony Serum/£165 for 30ml – buy here