Pré de Provence Shaving Soap

As I got this in a prize package, its value far exceeded price I paid. In fact, the only grip I would have about this fine product is the scent is just too light for tastes. I'm sure there are some who love the almost non-existent aroma, me I like to be punched in the nose. Otherwise, it lathers exceptionally well and provides a great, slick coat over my whiskers. The price tag was on my tin and I would definitely pay that much for this product.

This was one of my first shaving soaps - a present from my wife - and it's lasted a surprisingly long time. It took me awhile to get used to its understated positives - a soft, gentle lather which seems to almost envelop my face rather than go on it - a delicate aroma - and a sense of treating your face really well.

And though it was a present, it was surprisingly affordable - so price is a plus.

Additionally, the metal tin it comes in works well for travel.

All in all, a serious recommendation for a product that's not in the main stream.

I saw this last time I was in France. I should have bought some. The only thing I can complain about is the price. I like the sent, it is not overwhelming. really just right for my needs. I have a omega boar brush and this stuff lathers real nice with it. (nice and thick) It is very slick, and does not dry me out. I get a very nice smooth shave with it. So far I am liking it.

I really like the sage sent. This is a really good winter soap because, as many other French soaps this one has Shea butter so it moisturizes the face well. It comes in a decent tin with a screw on lid which is a plus. It is made in France, and I think thats a good thing.

I'm about a week into this soap and I'm enjoying it. I was looking for a less expensive soap to try something new and I liked the scent. Everyone says it's sage, but to me, there's an evergreen scent, which I thought would be nice with the holidays coming up.
My last soap was MWF, so maybe that has something to do with my review. I don't feel that this lathers up as well as some others. It lathers EASY, but I don't get as much lather as other soaps. As for the shave, I didn't notice a great deal of difference.

It's a very good, but not great product. A puck lasts forever. I've shaved maybe 50 times with this, and it looks untouched. Amazing.

One of my first shave soaps. This soap is very hard and wears slowly, and so it represents a good value. The scent is slightly herbal, slightly floral, slightly powdery...I even get a little nuttiness floating in the background. It's a clean scent that is inoffensive. The soap lathers easily enough, but it seems pickier than most -- I find it hard to get a consistently great lather from. Cushion and skincare are always there, but the slickness is not unless you have water/soap rations dialed in perfectly. The shea butter really leaves the skin feeling nice. Overall it is a really good soap, one I'll probably keep around to use on occasion.

I have been wet shaving for 35 years. This soap was a game changer for me. I had always used creams, but the ones I like, without the chemicals, are very expensive. This soap compelled me because of the clean chemistry. It took me 3 or 4 months to get the hang of how to build a lather with it. But now I have been using it for a year and I may never go back to anything else. Not much scent, but I prefer it that way. The ingredients are healthy and simple. I noticed the shaves were closer almost right off. The cushion is every bit as good as cream once you get the routine of how much soap and water to get on your brush. Highly recommended from an old salt.

A very good soap overall.

This one came as a gift as I tend to buy the low end highly regarded brands. It is nice to have a luxury, high end product in the rotation. lathers very well, provides great lubrication and has a wonderful silky feel. I also like the mild scent. It allows me to enjoy the actual shave and does not compete with my post shave products. I occasionally will use this as my starter for a super lather. I like to add an almond of Nivea creme, which does not compete overly with the scent, and create cloudy goodness, applied with a ST badger on those days when I really want to take some time and enjoy the shave.

Got this stuff while in Palm Springs and it is really good all around. Top 3, along with Tabac and Musgo Real.

Hello gents, the Coffee Addict here.

I got this soap about a week ago. It's very moisturizing, cushiony and creamy.

Scent: why a 10? It has a very light and subtle soapy smell. just the way I like it!!! with this kind of soaps every after shave comes perfect.

What else could you ask for? An elegant bowl?
In my case yes!! But the tin is elegant enough that it's not a shame to have it in your counter. In fact, the lather has never come out of it; it's deep enough, unless you are kind of a messy-shaver.

The French soaps, especially those that contain Shea butter, are the best performers. Pré Provence lacks on the scent front especially compared to Provence Santé Verlaine. However it's performance is a near match. It produces a great lather, moisturises and delivers a smooth shave.

An excellent soap that combined with my Futur & Red IP gave me a very nice BBS shave. I face lather and did 4 passes this moring and probably could have gotten 2 or 3 more. A very rich lather with a nice pleasant scent.

For anywhere around $13-15 this soap is a true bargain.

Quality is superb, I find that it hangs with and even outperforms the much more expensive english soaps.

The scent is very clean. Someone stated in a previous review it smells like laundry detergent...kinda-sorta, but its a very clean, fresh scent that I am in agreement with.

The lather is excellent. Good slickness, and definite cushion make this lather very, very good. It lathers fairly quickly; however, I do find that if you do more than 4 passes you may have to go back to the puck. But that would only be a drawback if this stuff was expensive, which for what you are getting, it's not.

As far as moisturizing, this stuff is way more moisturizing to me than any soap or any cream I have ever used. It is more moisturizing than mama bears, tabac, mwf, anything. And MFW is nothing to shake a stick at. After I shaved I felt little need to spray on some floid italian (which for the smell and cooling I did anyways). The alum bar also let me know that this soap did it's job in protecting and providing good lubricity.

My favorite soap now.

This is one of my favorite soaps. The rotation I've settled on is AOS, PdP, Santa Maria Novella, and Pens Tallow English Fern. I've been using this soap and the others I mentioned once or twice per week for the past 6 - 8 months.

Price - $17 shipped CONUS seems to be close to the going price. Some may scoff at that price and say it's too expensive but I think it's a pretty good deal. You get 5.25 oz of soap in a container that's great for travel. Each time I travel this is the one I take because the tin fits nicely in the dopp kit. Plus, as much as I've been using this soap, I'm just now starting to see a dent in the top and I can still make out the lettering. My guess is this soap will last a good while.

Quality - For me this soap is the benchmark. Everything about it exudes quality. I think if it came in a fancy bowl and was priced at $34 it would still compare favorably to other more expensive soaps.

Scent - Of course scent is subjective. Funny thing is I hated the scent of this when I first tried it about a year ago. I thought it was too sweet and smelled like detergent. This was after the initial whiff of the container one shave. Rookie mistake. I've learned that you need to get a few shaves under your belt before you make a judgement on scent. I now think the scent is awesome and I look forward to it. The scent is actually a little on the light side so you really don't notice it after you began to actually shave. The thing I learned is that once you open a soap for the first time, the scent is sometimes extremely strong and may not be indicative of what it will be after a few shaves in.

Lather - Outstanding lather from PdP!!! I'd classify this as very easy to lather and very forgiving so I'd recommend this for newbies and more experienced shavers. I typically soak the brush and put a tiny bit of water on top of the puck while I shower. I shake the brush till it's no longer dripping and load the brush for approximately 30 - 45 seconds and then face lather for about a minute. This method produces enough lather for 3.5 passes easy. No need to go back to the puck. The only reason I didn't give lather a 10 is because I've only been able to find 2 soaps that actually seem to go above and beyond in softening stubble. I don't expect this from shaving soaps/creams but boy is it nice! It's not a knock on PdP...it's just a nod to Pens Tallow English Fern and Santa Maria Novella. It's hard to describe what I mean by softening the stubble but if you've tried those two soaps and used them often you likely know what I mean.

Efficacy - At the end of the shave my face feels great!

Moisturizing - I'm indifferent about soaps being moisturizing. I see a drying soap as an opportunity to use my favorite balm. Funny thing is, it's ironic because I actually somewhat resent PdP for being so moisturizing because I don't need to use my PdP balm afterwards This soap contains Shea Butter so if moisturizing is what you're looking for this is where you'll find it.

Out of all the soaps/creams I've tried since I began wetshaving in 2008, this is one of the 4 soaps that made the cut for me. It compares favorably to the other 3 I mentioned above and I highly recommend it.

Been using PDP for approx 2 months now. Great stuff! Being a newbie the only other product I've used is MB. I tend to reach for PDP more often. As for the scent... to me the it has a refreshing soap smell. It does not linger too long but the PDP balm does. Once I figured out the proper ratios lathering was a breeze. I can only compare the moisturizing to a glycerine soap, so in that regard, I find it to be superior. Hope this helps.

Okay, before I say what I think I should mention I haven't tried a lot of stuff.

For a person that specifically looks for unscented, hypo-allergenic creams and soaps, the scent is very minimal. You can only smell a very light fragrance and it's a very pleasant one. I found this soap to be high quality, and am excited to be using it. My skin is very sensitive, so if yours is too don't be discouraged by the barely existent scent, it's worth trying for $13. Anyway, after using it my skin felt really smooth.

After about 30 shaves or so I think I'm beginning to get the hang of this product. I got this in a trade because the 'shea butter' soaps piqued my interest at one point, and the fainter more herbal fragrance of PdP compared to Provence Santé sounded very appealing.

Let's begin with that. PdP's scent is light but not absent. It's soft, slightly zesty and pleasantly sweet-herbal. I wouldn't mind it being somewhat stronger, or somewhat more fresher, but on the same note it is very pleasant and unobtrusive. You don't need fancy stuff to make something smell good.

The packaging is a tin with screw cap. Yes, it adds a bit of class and makes travelling with this soap very easy, but at the same time I found the tin to be a constant source of annoyance. Because the soap fills the tin to the brim, loading one's brush dumps half of its moisture and suds-becoming-concentrated lather on your hands. I pried the soap out of the container and put it in a plastic container with high sides and a snap-on lid. It doesn't look very snazzy, true, but it makes working with the soap easier.

The soap itself is quite hard and doesn't dissolve easily. You can feel this by moving a slightly wetted finger across the surface. Be prepared to work at it for a bit longer than quite a lot of other soaps, and go at it with a somewhat stiffer brush. I have tried a few (an Omega boar, a Rooney 3/1 st and a floppy Shavemac st), and I think I like the Rooney best. An advantage is that it will probably last you quite a while. Lathering is an interesting experience. I load my brush (first a Shavemac, now a Rooney 3/1) quite full and then bowl lather for about 3 to 4 royal passes. Concentrated PdP lather with little water looks very dry and feels somewhat airy. Other soaps I know create a paste of sorts, but not PdP. Only when adding water does it collapse into a nice, creamy mass. But it can't stand a lot of water either. One disadvantage or even annoyance is that the lather's stability isn't perfect, especially at the wetter end of the scale. It tends to evaporate quite quickly then (I must relather the other half of my face!). It's much better when it's concentrated, but even then it won't last forever.

Efficacy is very good if not excellent. Once I found out that in my case PdP's lather must be concentrated (which is unusual, such a state will usually flay my skin), I've had a steady and reliable stream of effortless and close shaves without nicks, cuts or ingrowns. There are always some spots which resist the final ATG pass, but I've come to accept that my beard is like that and needs a bit of touching up.

Moisturising... My skin feels rather smooth after rinsing, but this state quickly passes. There is something in this soap which provokes it (the shea butter?) but it's not a long-lasting affair. Let met put it this way: the soap didn't dry out my skin as some other products do.

The price / quality of this soap is very good. For me as a European resident, obtaining it is difficult and more expensive than a North American inhabitant, but if ignore p&p, and calculate backwards to price per 100 g (a puck weighs 150 g!) then this soap is very competitively priced. It does have a few little quirks and its operating range is somewhat limited due to the instability of the lather, but this is reflected in the price, I think. If you care about this sort of thing then an extra bonus is that it's an all-vegetable soap. I would heartily recommend this soap to a somewhat more experienced shaver (owing to its hardness and slightly fussy lather stability). As for myself, it's a shame it's not more widely available here in Europe; I'm contemplating ordering a few tins to add it to my very small general rotation because it simply works for me.

Like others I was suprized at how well this product works. Thick rich lather with lots of moisturiziation. But the smell... well I'm not sure there is any smell.

My benchmark is still Tabac, but this is clearly on the list of superior products. Highly recommended.