Price and I both have special attachments to the stuff: I visited Tahiti for the first time in 2005, physically and emotionally scarred by a double whammy of major surgery and a bad breakup, and found, in the paradisiacal island and the oil, a balm for both. Price had been fascinated by the purported beautifying properties of monoï for many years before introducing the ingredient in Carol’s Daughter’s recently launched Monoï Repairing Collection (featuring a shampoo, conditioner, and hair mask). When you stumble across a multitasking moisturizer said to deliver shiny, frizz-free hair and soft, glowy skin—and, in a single drop, an olfactive vacation—it’s hard not to become obsessed.
Eric Vaxelaire, the Institut du Monoï’s charismatic French-born director, echoes Nars’ sentiment as he drives Price and me past a tiare plantation, where the snow-white blossoms dot the landscape like stars. The heart of monoï’s appeal, he believes, is simple: It’s paradise in a bottle. “It creates a very strong, positive emotional response in people,” he says, “like Tahiti itself.” Because its prime ingredients can’t be produced anywhere else, monoï is imbued with an indelible sense of place: To use it is to sample the legendary sybaritic delights of the South Pacific, to be transported, in a sense, to its remote aquamarine lagoons and majestic volcanic peaks. I remember the sweet serenity I felt every time I opened the bottle I brought home from my first visit—it was as if the honking cars outside my Manhattan window dissolved, momentarily, into crashing waves. That it also imparted an island-goddess radiance to my skin and hair was just a bonus.
