Ok, I just stumbled upon this thread and figured I'd comment as my name was mentioned a few times. While I can't tell anyone what will be the absolute best soap will be for them I can share my own experience. I do oversee a soap sample passaround on another forum and I've tried most of what's out there with the exception of some newer ones. I started the passaround several years back as I'd been searching for the best 10 to 12 soaps on the planet. I stated out buying as many soaps and samples that I could get my hands on. Once I had quite a few I started trading samples with other forum members. I'd try anything I hadn't tried before and after trying about 600 or so I narrowed my shave den down to about 120 soaps. It's grown and shrank several more times and now it's around 70 consisting of a handful of vendors. I consider myself to be very, very selective at this point. I have also helped several artisans out with testing and feedback of their new formulas and I feel that at this point I likely have more experience than most when it comes to shaving soaps. I don't agree with many of the ratings I see on the YouTube videos and I'm left wondering what people are thinking when I watch some of them.
As far as being unbiased goes in the passaround the most important rule is that the reviews are honest. I consider myself a very honest and straightforward person and my reviews reflect my accurate opinion of the soaps I try. I've seen some people blindly praise one vendor and bash everyone else and frankly I don't understand that at all. I do know a lot of the vendors through the passaround, most are exceptionally kind, but how a soap performs has nothing to do with how nice the artisan is. I call it how it is. In reviewing a soap for me the scent and the price are not weighed in the performance. What scents some people like and don't like don't effect the performance. Sure I like some scents better than others but I've found my opinion on a particular scent can change as well. What I like you may not and vice versa. As far as price goes, again it has no impact on performance whatsoever. A Corvette does not perform better than a Ferrari because it cost one sixth the price. maybe it makes it a better value but it doesn't make it perform any better. I've seen some reviewers rate a soap higher because it was less expensive. Again, not a reason for that as far as I'm concerned. I don't get a bunch or free stuff and I'm not compensated for sharing my opinion. I have no desire to post YouTube videos in an effort to garner attention and I have nothing to gain monetarily by sharing my opinion, I do it only to help others out in the forums.
So having been through several soaps I'd be happy to share my favorites with you.
1. Grooming Dept - to me this is currently the very best soap ever made and has been since it's introduction. There are several formulas and they are all excellent, outstanding in fact. Even the older formulas. The scents are often inspired by high end colognes. Scent wise some are outstanding and others might not be for everyone. None are boring though. This soap has a exceptional ability to hold a ton of water allowing it to stay very slick throughout the shave. Where it really shines though for me is in the post shave qualities. After using this soap for just a few days you'll notice your skin change for the better. After a week or so you'll find your skin in the very best shape it's been in since you were a newborn. In my opinion this is what makes these soaps better than everything else out there and why I reach for it more frequently than any other.
While this is a Grooming Dept thread I'll share some thoughts on other soaps as well for comparison purposes.
2. My second favorite soap is Tallow & Steel. This one gets knocked by many for the scents though I've found that after using them several times the scents do grow on you and get better and better with additional uses. Unfortunately many sniff the tub and skip it or give up on it way too early. This soap, like Grooming Dept, changes my skin for the better rather quickly. A bit less so than Grooming Dept but a week or two of using Tallow & Steel will significantly change your skin for the better. It's what I'd consider an exceptional soap.
3. Lisa's Natural Herbal Creations (new Premium version) - this is another that displays some excellent post shave qualities. Not quite as much so as Grooming Dept and Tallow & Steel but it's still very impressive and deserving of a very high rating.
In using these three soaps most often I've found that my skin is in exceptional shape. Since my skin retains the benefits from these soaps this makes the other soaps that I use in between much better as well. To grade a soap properly it requires a bit of work on my part. To accurately and thoroughly test a soap I have to dry my face back out for several days using something like Tabac to get it to a normal dried out state then use the test soap for a week or two noting if and how my skin changes from day to day. If I don't do it this way then I'll give the test soap a higher rating than it deserves. I likely take testing a bit farther than many others do as it's only when I do that I can get an accurate assessment of a soap. There are tons of really good shaving soaps out right now but only a few that are truly exceptional.
My shave den consists of Grooming Dept and Tallow and Steel (for the most part). Others I've found that are excellent and tier 1 for me are PannaCrema, Wholly Kaw Donkey Milk, B&M Reserve Line, Sudsy Soapery and Declaration Grooming. We're talking top 1% of the over 600 soaps that I've tried here, so it's certainly no small task to outshine 590 plus other soaps. These are all soaps made by some of the best soap makers on the planet. It's very difficult to find any fault with any of them but they don't get my skin as moisturized and healthy as the others listed above do. You'll find that they are exceptional but they only take my skin so far. I've been using up what I have from these vendors and replacing them with soaps from Grooming Dept, Tallow & Steel and to a lesser extent Lisa's Premium. In doing so I've been using many of these soaps up from start to finish and confirming my earlier findings. My skin is not in the same state as it is when I use Grooming Dept soaps daily. I don't rate these other tier 1 soaps as high as my top three because they don't get my skin to the same point as my absolute favorites do. I do expect that they'd rank in everyone's tier 1 though.
While not tier 1 soaps for me I also always have Martin de Candre and Le Pere Lucien on hand as. I do use a water softener at home (highly recommended) but when I travel LPL and MdC are my go to soaps as they'll lather effortlessly in the very worst water the planet has to offer.
Maybe I put more value than others do in what a soap does for my skin but try using a Grooming Dept soap exclusively for a couple weeks straight and watch what happens. I'm sure you'll be impressed.
Anyway, just my thoughts, so maybe not representative of what others think. Hopefully, they were worth the time it took to read them.
