Grooming Dept club

[RayClem]

Wow! Impressive! How do you like the Lavender? And how about the Cedarwood? I'm considering these two.

I have not tried Cedarwood. It is in the Nai Vegan base which is superb, but I cannot attest to the scent. It is a complex blend of essential oils and natural resins. It contains several differfent cedarwood oils as well as others: Orange EO, Grapefruit EO, Ginger Lily EO, Ginger EO, Pink Pepper EO, Geranium Absolute, Rose Absolute, Howood EO, Siam Wood EO, Benzoin Resin, Carrot Seed EO, Alaska Cedarwood EO, Hiba (Japanese Cedarwood) EO, Port Orford Cedarwood EO, Styrax, Muhuhu EO, Himalayan Cedarwood EO, Virginia Cedarwood EO. Texas Hill Country Cedarwood EO, Atlas Cedarwood Absolute. Vetiver Absolute, Patchouli EO, Vanilla Co2 extract, Tonka Bean Absolute.

Lavender is in the Kairos base which is similarly superb. I love the Grooming Dept Lavender. I find many lavender scents to be too pungent or too camphorous. This one contains all essential oils and 97% are French High Elevation Lavender & French Maillette Lavender + 3% Violet Absolute, Cedarwood Absolute, Labdanum Absolute, Geranium Absolute, and Jasmine Sambac Absolute. This is a very calming, sweet, floral scent. It would be ideal for an evening shave to relax you before bedtime. I have two other lavender soaps: Lisa's Natural Herbal Creations Gentleman's Lavender and Declaration Groomings/ Chatillon Lux Champs de Lavande. I much prefer the Grooming Dept scent.

 

[Simple09]

Wow! Impressive! How do you like the Lavender? And how about the Cedarwood? I'm considering these two.

Love the Cedarwood and the Lavendar. Lavendar is one of the best Lavendar soap scents I have ever tried! I was and still am a tester for all of Mohammad’s soaps before he releases them. I would say Mumtaz is the best Kairos base soap that he has made. I also have the new combo Kairos and lamb tallow Amare which is outstanding in every way. My 2 favorite bases used to be the duck fat/lamb tallow combo base and his Mallard base. Now it’s the Nai and the Mallard base. I still love his combo base and have just about every soap made in that base still in my rotation but the new Nai vegan base is on another level and the new Amore in the reworked Mallard base is also something special! Mo is a friend and I refer to him as the “mad genius” because he is always tinkering with his bases and creating new bases and new stuff. I use his entire regimen and there is nothing that compares to it in the wet shaving industry for my skin!


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[Southsider]

Love the Cedarwood and the Lavendar. Lavendar is one of the best Lavendar soap scents I have ever tried! I was and still am a tester for all of Mohammad’s soaps before he releases them. I would say Mumtaz is the best Kairos base soap that he has made. I also have the new combo Kairos and lamb tallow Amare which is outstanding in every way. My 2 favorite bases used to be the duck fat/lamb tallow combo base and his Mallard base. Now it’s the Nai and the Mallard base. I still love his combo base and have just about every soap made in that base still in my rotation but the new Nai vegan base is on another level and the new Amore in the reworked Mallard base is also something special! Mo is a friend and I refer to him as the “mad genius” because he is always tinkering with his bases and creating new bases and new stuff. I use his entire regimen and there is nothing that compares to it in the wet shaving industry for my skin!


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I like the Cedarwood too based on my one use of it. And I also like Mumtaz--it has a subtle richness to it that I find appealing. Lavender is incoming.

 

[Badger in the Sun]

Lavender is in the Kairos base which is similarly superb. I love the Grooming Dept Lavender. I find many lavender scents to be too pungent or too camphorous. This one contains all essential oils and 97% are French High Elevation Lavender & French Maillette Lavender + 3% Violet Absolute, Cedarwood Absolute, Labdanum Absolute, Geranium Absolute, and Jasmine Sambac Absolute. This is a very calming, sweet, floral scent. It would be ideal for an evening shave to relax you before bedtime. I have two other lavender soaps: Lisa's Natural Herbal Creations Gentleman's Lavender and Declaration Groomings/ Chatillon Lux Champs de Lavande. I much prefer the Grooming Dept scent.

I tried the GD Lavender for the first time tonight. I agree that it's really good. It seems like a very natural lavender. The other lavenders I've tried have been Mike's and Mystic Waters. I like the scents of both, but GD is just as nice and a couple notches better in performance, especially post-shave

I also just received Conca d'Oro, but I haven't used it yet. The puck smells nice.

 

[Simple09]

I like the Cedarwood too based on my one use of it. And I also like Mumtaz--it has a subtle richness to it that I find appealing. Lavender is incoming.

I think the Mumtaz is the best in the Kairos base because Mo added Tonka Bean to that one. I could be wrong.


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[Pottertons]

I just tried Unum the other day. Great performance and another great scent, which actually smelled different/opened up more, once lathered up.
To my nose, most soaps remain the same in both forms.

 

[Nidan]

Got some Grooming Dept "Charbon" soap recently. I can't fault the performance, but I was surprised to see the bottom of the container showing after only about 10 shaves. If I keep using it at this rate, it will probably last me 20 shaves total. I typically spend about 20-30 seconds lathering against the puck and then face lather. Am I using too much product? Or is this normal for Grooming Dept? This was the most money I ever spent on a soap, so I am disappointed it's going so fast.

 

[shavefan]

Hard to say. GD changes formulas pretty regularly (or at least they did), some may be softer than others. With any new soap one needs a few latherings to dial in, using no more soap than necessary to complete the shave.

I've only had one GD soap and that was about 2 years ago so maybe not the same formula as yours, but I remember mine went rather quickly too.

 

[guitarslinger]

Gd soaps go fast. That’s just the way it is. I hit the bottom of my mallard rose chai in 8 shaves. They were all really good shaves though.

 

[Rudy Vey]

you guys must be doing something wrong.
Even the softest soaps he had made lasted at least 50+ shaves for me.
The early soaps were often quite soft, but lately his soap are quite hard and one can really load off the puck. If you go onto the soft soaps like you would do with a really hard soap, you will use way too much product. Even with the harder soaps now, I go maybe 5 seconds over the puck and have lots of lather.

 

[shavefan]

I hit the bottom of my mallard rose chai in 8 shaves.

Whoa! That must be some kind of record.

 

[SterFry]

Got some Grooming Dept "Charbon" soap recently. I can't fault the performance, but I was surprised to see the bottom of the container showing after only about 10 shaves. If I keep using it at this rate, it will probably last me 20 shaves total. I typically spend about 20-30 seconds lathering against the puck and then face lather. Am I using too much product? Or is this normal for Grooming Dept? This was the most money I ever spent on a soap, so I am disappointed it's going so fast.

Dude, I load for, like, 8 seconds and have more than enough for 3 passed.

Also, if you're trying to get good milage out of a soap start using a synthetic brush. They're way, way more product efficient

 

[Badger in the Sun]

I've had a bunch of Grooming Dept soaps, probably a dozen or so. I haven't tried Charbon, but I have a few that use the same Kairos base. I haven't experienced anything like the usage rate you describe.

I find that GD soaps go at about the same rate as other softer artisan soaps like Declaration Grooming, Arianna & Evans, and Tallow & Steel.

 

[Rhody]

The trick is to buy several more and spread out the usage. The more you buy the greater the likelihood that you won’t hit bottom.
Also probably loading too much.

 

[Nidan]

I'm clearly loading too much. Hope I can make the rest of it last. I don't have very much experience with artisan soaps. I've only used the standard products like the Speick stick, Tabac, Poraso, etc. When I reconnected with this forum after some years away I got the GD and also some soap from Mike's Natural. That stuff is much harder than my example of Charbon.

 

[Badger in the Sun]

I'm clearly loading too much. Hope I can make the rest of it last. I don't have very much experience with artisan soaps. I've only used the standard products like the Speick stick, Tabac, Poraso, etc. When I reconnected with this forum after some years away I got the GD and also some soap from Mike's Natural. That stuff is much harder than my example of Charbon.

Mike's is definitely harder. A tub of it seems to last forever for me.

 

[Wetfred]

So, I'm buying my first GD soap and want to know which base do you recommend, Nai or Kairo?

I know Nai is vegan and Kairo is tallow but in terms of slickness and scent.
Does one stand out over the other?

 

[Badger in the Sun]

So, I'm buying my first GD soap and want to know which base do you recommend, Nai or Kairo?

I know Nai is vegan and Kairo is tallow but in terms of slickness and scent.
Does one stand out over the other?

This is a really difficult question for me to answer. Both bases are excellent. You can't go wrong with either. To me, Nai is perhaps a bit slicker. I'd choose on the basis of scents. In the Kairos base, I've tried Conca D'Oro, Acens Agrumes, and Lavender. Of these, Lavender is by far my favorite. In the Nai base, I have Aion, which is a woody, mossy scent that I like as well.

 

[CJB3]

You really can’t go wrong with any Grooming Dept base. They are all excellent.

 

[Elvis Outlander]

I sure love the Kairos base. I am really liking Charbon. I don't think I would like the scent all by itself, but it sure adds a lot of nice depth to other aftershaves / colognes I really like.

There is no other soap that comes close to it in terms of performance. I just know it is nice and creamy while giving a close, close shave. I get a super shave with it no matter what.