I do not think there are any specific regulations that are forcing the change from tallow to vegan in the EU. It just seems that vegan soaps have a greater following in the EU than in the States where tallow soaps still dominate.
Declining sales at the, "Three T's?"
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I do not think there are any specific regulations that are forcing the change from tallow to vegan in the EU. It just seems that vegan soaps have a greater following in the EU than in the States where tallow soaps still dominate.
I agree YMMV, but I’m not the only one:
The new tallow-free Haslinger Schafmilch: just as amazing!
Inspired by the recent discussions on Haslinger shaving soaps and their latest reformulation to a tallow-free formula, I decided to buy a few pucks of the Schafmilch, one of my all-time favourite, and test it myself. But before going on I want to give some info on this historic brand to the new...
www.badgerandblade.com
No worries. To be clear, I love the Salter scent and find the performance improved over previous Harris soaps, but I would still put this below the tier of soaps (for me) that includes Valobra sticks, which in turn is below the tier that (for me) includes Speick and Tabac.
I like the English soaps for scent, the Germans for performance, the Italians for simplicity. The artisans are hit or miss on all of these, but can be great.
La Toja is a vegan soap that only comes in stick form and isn't English or German or Italian or artisan, and it's stunning stuff.
Use what you like. Like it for whatever reason matters to you.
Shave.
And Tabac.
AimlessWanderer
Remember to forget me!
I would take a different viewpoint. Some artisans embrace differences between production batches, while others strive to eliminate them. A cabinet maker who produces near identical exquisite pieces of furniture for twenty years, is no less an artisan to my mind than one who does bespoke work, and for whom every piece is different. The effort, skills, and equipment in their jointing, marquetry and finishing, likely remains common to both.
a mixed bag for me... TOBS, Haslinger for sure. MWF didn't work for me... the others are artisanal... Mikes, Mickey Lee, and most recently Zingariman. Haslinger Schaffmilch and Zingariman Wanderer are the top of the heap. Never tried TTT or the others mentioned.
IMightBeWrong
Loves a smelly brush
It really is tragic to me that these brands let their quality drop so much when they reformulated to non-tallow. They all simply reformulated and left it alone as if it wasn’t all that important. I tried some Jermyn St shortly after the reformulations. Absolutely terrible and unstable. Liked the scent. I had a wooden bowl and puck from Penhaligon’s, their Sartorial scent. Better than the others that were also reformulated, but not impressive. Bowl of Floris 89. Not stable, dries out quickly. Love the scent.
If these brands would simply work with a good soap maker like Valobra or Saponificio Varesino I would buy their pucks for $40-$50 a piece to keep in their wooden bowls without complaint. I have and love a bowl of C&S made by Valobra. Wonderful stuff. The fact that the other big name British brands haven’t followed suit and started working with better manufacturers for their shaving soaps (or brushes for that matter) makes me think they honestly don’t care about the wet shaving demographic anymore.
If these brands would simply work with a good soap maker like Valobra or Saponificio Varesino I would buy their pucks for $40-$50 a piece to keep in their wooden bowls without complaint. I have and love a bowl of C&S made by Valobra. Wonderful stuff. The fact that the other big name British brands haven’t followed suit and started working with better manufacturers for their shaving soaps (or brushes for that matter) makes me think they honestly don’t care about the wet shaving demographic anymore.
And Tabac.
Tabac, Boker, a couple Goodfellas Smile...had to stop at some point and just put etc
+1! Nice scent cannot cover poor performance!! Sad!
We'll always have Harris.
IMightBeWrong
Loves a smelly brush
We can hope! If it wasn’t for the resurgence of wet shaving a few years back I wonder how many brands of shaving soap wouldn’t be around anymore.
Do you have any backup for this claim? Because IMO that is bordering on slander. I've never heard of chinese soap noodles aside of early US Artisans, which then probably made sense for them, just getting their feet wet in their own kitchens.
btw here a video from the SV youtube channel:
Steve56
Ask me about shaving naked!
it’s mentioned on other forums, Reddit, etc, but you can‘t link to them here.
As I said, nothing wrong with it, and a lot of artisans outsource bases.
And only the shaving soap, IIRC they make their base for the other soaps.
Go look and tell us what you find, I’m perfectly willing to be wrong.
As I said, nothing wrong with it, and a lot of artisans outsource bases.
And only the shaving soap, IIRC they make their base for the other soaps.
Go look and tell us what you find, I’m perfectly willing to be wrong.
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I would love to know which artisans outsource their bases. This is a really interesting claim. I see that @Earl_Grey also mentioned that early artisans bought Chinese soap noodles. Again, I would love to know who allegedly did this. Extraordinary claims. And the burden of proof falls on those making them.
Biggest batch of Sodium Stearate (soap!) production I have audited was about 2500 lbs....I hope to find some videos I took and put them up here.
In 7 years of wetshaving I think I've only used two* traditional brands, Proraso and Palmolive (the 2 P's?). I guess it's because in the first year I found Stirling and just settled into their products for many years because I found them to have better performance, inexpensive cost, and n+1 scent offerings. But last year I finally took the plunge into some of the higher priced artisans (hence the sabatical this year...), and now I'm also curious about trying more traditional products. It's a shame that the 3 T's' traditional formulations aren't available anymore, but I'm still interested in the others.
*Right now I'm using Kiss My Face cream, which strikes me as neither artisan nor traditional (industrial scale & distributed through brick and mortar stores, but not that old), kind of the American contrast to MdC and Haslinger, which position themselves as both aritisan AND traditional, lol.
*Right now I'm using Kiss My Face cream, which strikes me as neither artisan nor traditional (industrial scale & distributed through brick and mortar stores, but not that old), kind of the American contrast to MdC and Haslinger, which position themselves as both aritisan AND traditional, lol.
KMF comes out of the crunchy granola tradition -- natural ingredients, healthy for you, no animals harmed, etc.
Saponificio Varesiono is one of the largest soap makers in Europe (maybe after the insolvency of Kappus Seife in Germany the largest) with 2.500 tons of soap per year. They also make most of the washing agents in Italy. They are huge. I am not convinced that they use soaps from China when they can manufacture them on their own machinery and huge factory lines. They also produce soaps and toiletteries for other companys under their house brands.
They are more than the luxury line we know as wet shavers. It's just the tip of the iceberg. And they are NOT artisans!
They are more than the luxury line we know as wet shavers. It's just the tip of the iceberg. And they are NOT artisans!
I tried a TOBS in sandalwood for the first time the other day and was impressed with the lather that I tot. I have not been impressed with truefitt and Mitchell wool fat is ok but I havent got great results so far. Maybe it's my poor technique Nice post shave feel though
I use Captian's Choice and Stirling. But the remainder is mostly older and more established brands. Though I have only used TOBS and not the other two T's.
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