Lothantique

Lothantique's roots go back to 1920, when siblings Joséphine and Nestor Mouranchon founded the Mouranchon Brothers enterprise in Chateauneuf Val Saint Donat, near the Lure mountain in Provence. The family came from lavender-growing farmers, and Nestor, trained as a chemist and perfumer, worked alongside his sister to cultivate and distill lavender flowers for sale to the perfume houses of nearby Grasse and Paris. The pair went on to open a perfume distillery, Mouranchon Frères, and gradually widened the business into canvas bags, soaps, and colognes over the following decades. The brand as it exists today was built by Denis and Dominique Vogade, grandchildren of the founders, who combined the family's old-world Provençal formulas and techniques with contemporary manufacturing to create Lothantique as a distinct company. In 1999 the Vogade family entered a partnership aimed at expanding distribution of French bath-and-home brands into North America, a move that helped grow Lothantique from a small Provence workshop into a company selling internationally. The line today spans soaps, candles, diffusers, and other essential-oil-based bath and home products, produced under close to a dozen associated brand names, while still tracing its formulas and identity back to the Mouranchon family's original lavender business.