Is it me ?

RussellR5555 said:
For me it is part of the experience and is very pleasant as you are shaving. In general though most scents are nice even the bog standard ones.

Except for that Macca Root , that stuff stinks :sick:
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Macca Root happens to make my face burn! The smell isn't the best though, it's a weird one - smelt like a synthetic take on decaying plant matter....

I'm not too bothered about how a soap smells, as long as the smell isn't too bad and it reacts well with my skin I'm ok with it. I tend to prefer neutral scents though, I find some scents eg Cella to be a bit too much when used over consecutive days.

Tabac was a soap with a smell I wasn't too enthusiastic about at first but I seem to have grown quite fond of it with repeated usage.
 
I like a good smelling soap over a bad smelling one just as with food & women. ;) However, as of late I am going back gradually to basic soaps, e.g., Williams, Valobra, Palmolive & Arko sticks, as the insanity over scent & especially the purported post shave face "feel" has gone off the rails. I asked one of the biggest Youtube reviewers recently what template he uses to review soaps, i.e., what % for scent, what for glide, etc., and he refused to answer. It was then it dawned on me he's just flying by the seat of his pants as he goes along and IMO gives farrrrrrr too much weight to post shave face "feel". Watching/reading many soap reviews today is like watching an automobile commercial with fancy camera shots of beautiful babes and exotic locales, buy nary a damn word about the performance. :rolleyes:
 
Scent of a soap is always going to be secondary, a soaps function is to protect your skin when shaving.
That being said, I could not use a soap no matter how good it's performance is if it smelled bad.
There are so many good soaps with good scents available there should be something for everyone. P.
 
Bogeyman said:
especially the purported post shave face "feel"
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This is not a myth, some soaps really dry my skin, others don't leading to a much more comfortable feeling post-shave. Proraso for one I find very drying so it makes my skin feel itchy after I've used it.

As for scent, it matters to me, I enjoy it during the shave and I can usually pick it up faintly for a while afterwards.
 
chris.hale said:
This is not a myth, some soaps really dry my skin, others don't leading to a much more comfortable feeling post-shave. Proraso for one I find very drying so it makes my skin feel itchy after I've used it...
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Yes, I agree, However, I find it hard to believe that a soap made by an artisan is somehow better at that than a brand name moisturizer manufactured by trained/degreed chemists who do this for a living in a market millions of times more competitive than that of shaving soap.
 
Bogeyman said:
Yes, I agree, However, I find it hard to believe that a soap made by an artisan is somehow better at that than a brand name moisturizer manufactured by trained/degreed chemists who do this for a living in a market millions of times more competitive than that of shaving soap.
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You're right however I don't want to have to faff about with moisturiser, I'd rather have non-drying soap.
 
I don't use any kind of AS, so the scent of the soap is the whole experience for me. I buy and use soaps entirely on the quality of the scent, so not surprisingly I have a lot of artisan soaps.

Tabac and Cella lasted one shave before being given away. Proraso and Arko lasted a week. I could marginally just about shave with Arko once in a while but the others - forget it. I read endless threads recommending these mass-market soaps, and I'd probably rather have a skunk as a pet.
 
les24preludes said:
I don't use any kind of AS, so the scent of the soap is the whole experience for me. I buy and use soaps entirely on the quality of the scent, so not surprisingly I have a lot of artisan soaps.

Tabac and Cella lasted one shave before being given away. Proraso and Arko lasted a week. I could marginally just about shave with Arko once in a while but the others - forget it. I read endless threads recommending these mass-market soaps, and I'd probably rather have a skunk as a pet.
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The only thing I would say is you are right the formulations used by the big companies are put together by Chemists etc., but they do have a lot of conflicting parameters they have to balance that the Artisan does not, The key ones often being Cost , Easy of Manufacture, and Adaption to very large batch sizes.

Also where an artisan will push the boundries the larger makers are looking for a constant result.
 
RussellR5555 said:
The only thing I would say is you are right the formulations used by the big companies are put together by Chemists etc., but they do have a lot of conflicting parameters they have to balance that the Artisan does not, The key ones often being Cost , Easy of Manufacture, and Adaption to very large batch sizes.

Also where an artisan will push the boundries the larger makers are looking for a constant result.
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Yes, but I will call BS about artisan soaps actually shaving better than the old standbys. I am not talking about moisturizing effect nor post shave feel, but actual slickness/cushion. I used Valobra and a Palmolive stick this past week against my newest top tier artisan A&E soap and as regards the actual shaving part I would be remiss not to say that the former two shaved as good if not a tad better.
 
Bogeyman said:
But the money you save on non-artisan soap and a bottle of moisturizer that will last a year or so more than offsets the cost and you'll have more money for other items.
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Or I could stick to MWF and have the best of both worlds. I agree with you about shaving performance the aforementioned MWF and Speick are both excellent. P&B however are also excellent and not unreasonably priced.
 
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