Marseille soap, or Savon de Marseille, is as French as wine
and cheese, with a history that dates from the Middle Ages. Frenchwomen use the
crude square blocks as a natural skin cleanser and, in a pinch, as anything
from a toothpaste substitute to a moth repellent.
In recent years, though, cheap Chinese and Turkish knockoffs
have been flooding the market, and the soapmakers of Marseille are rallying to
protect their product’s reputation. They banded together recently to ask the
French government to grant them a label of authenticity, to distinguish the
genuine stuff from the imitators.
And that is where the trouble really began.
The original Marseille soap had a specific olive-oil-based
recipe that was considered so sacred that Louis XIV protected it with a royal
edict. But a battle has erupted between two soapmaking factions over exactly
what the modern rules should be for what constitutes a true Marseille soap.
On one side are the soapmasters, based mainly in the
Mediterranean port that gave the soap its name. They say that the label of
authenticity should go only to products made strictly by the original Louis
XIV-approved recipe. It’s quite a process, involving heating a mix of soda ash,
seawater and olive oil for several days, and then cooling it in open pits. The
finished soap is dun-green and odorless.
On the other side are a group of 12 large companies,
including L’Occitane, a global chain retailer of body and fragrance products.
They want the government to certify their recipe, which allows the use of
cheaper vegetable oils along with additives and perfumes to produce scented soap
bars in a rainbow of colors.
“The ancient recipe is outmoded,” said Emilie Grangeon, the
general secretary of the Association of Makers of Savon de Marseille, which
represents the companies. “We should be able to improve the quality.”
Each side is refusing to talk to the other, while trying to
convince the government that its recipe should win. The government, for its
part, is using its own time-tested method to delay a decision: It has set up an
investigative panel that will deliver a recommendation in September.
Credit Illustration by Tamara
Shopsin.
Photos by neydtstock, nulinukas, nika novak, kai keisuke/shutterstock
