I'm surprised to see that this may be the first review of this French shaving soap.
About 18 months ago, I was buying some samples of other soaps from The Superior Shave when I saw a sample of a French soap that I'd not heard of before - La Savonnerie Bourbonnaise. It was advertised as having donkey milk so, having not tried this ingredient at the time, I decided to toss it into my basket. A chunk of hard soap wrapped in wax paper arrived a few days later.
The soap came up in my rotation of samples on Wednesday so I opened the package. Looking closely, it seemed like a cube of bar soap. I cut it into slices, pressed them into a bowl and started to lather. It seemed to whip up fairly quickly, so I took the lather from the bowl and applied it to my face.
I started my first pass but by the time I reached the other side of my face, it seemed like I hadn't lathered it. I didn't think about it much but finished the pass. Same thing seemed to happen on the second pass. I had just arrived home from an overnight flight, so I chalked it up to bad prep and figured that the soap was just going to be meh.
Yesterday, I decided to see if blooming would help. It seemed to help some with the lathering issue, but I still wasn't able to get the lather to stick around. As I shaved though, I noticed that my razor seemed to be sliding easily across my face. I finished up, a little perplexed.
Later in the morning, I found that I'd gotten a really good shave. My face was smooth and soft. I figured I should do a little research to find out if there was a way to enhance the poor lather I was getting.
My first stop was here at B&B. After searching for for the soap, I only found a few mentions of the name but nothing more. So I went to the maker's website. Despite being in French, I figured out that I'd probably discovered the culprit. Here are the soap's ingredients:
This explained a lot. I've always heard that soaps with olive oil were poor for shaving purposes. As I finished up my looking around, I went back to the Superior Shaving site. I looked again at the description for this soap and found that the owner had described the soap as "the most slippery soap I have ever used in my life."
So I guess all of the pieces fell into place. I'd describe the soap as that has given me the best shave I've gotten with horrible lather.
Having pulled all this info together, I used it again today. And I got another great shave today. I'm not sure if I like the soap enough to get a bar of it. But now that I know what I'm dealing with, I'm looking forward to use the rest of the sample.
About 18 months ago, I was buying some samples of other soaps from The Superior Shave when I saw a sample of a French soap that I'd not heard of before - La Savonnerie Bourbonnaise. It was advertised as having donkey milk so, having not tried this ingredient at the time, I decided to toss it into my basket. A chunk of hard soap wrapped in wax paper arrived a few days later.
The soap came up in my rotation of samples on Wednesday so I opened the package. Looking closely, it seemed like a cube of bar soap. I cut it into slices, pressed them into a bowl and started to lather. It seemed to whip up fairly quickly, so I took the lather from the bowl and applied it to my face.
I started my first pass but by the time I reached the other side of my face, it seemed like I hadn't lathered it. I didn't think about it much but finished the pass. Same thing seemed to happen on the second pass. I had just arrived home from an overnight flight, so I chalked it up to bad prep and figured that the soap was just going to be meh.
Yesterday, I decided to see if blooming would help. It seemed to help some with the lathering issue, but I still wasn't able to get the lather to stick around. As I shaved though, I noticed that my razor seemed to be sliding easily across my face. I finished up, a little perplexed.
Later in the morning, I found that I'd gotten a really good shave. My face was smooth and soft. I figured I should do a little research to find out if there was a way to enhance the poor lather I was getting.
My first stop was here at B&B. After searching for for the soap, I only found a few mentions of the name but nothing more. So I went to the maker's website. Despite being in French, I figured out that I'd probably discovered the culprit. Here are the soap's ingredients:
Olive oil, coconut oil, donkey milk, shea butter, cedar and lemongrass essential oils, and white clay.
This explained a lot. I've always heard that soaps with olive oil were poor for shaving purposes. As I finished up my looking around, I went back to the Superior Shaving site. I looked again at the description for this soap and found that the owner had described the soap as "the most slippery soap I have ever used in my life."
So I guess all of the pieces fell into place. I'd describe the soap as that has given me the best shave I've gotten with horrible lather.
Having pulled all this info together, I used it again today. And I got another great shave today. I'm not sure if I like the soap enough to get a bar of it. But now that I know what I'm dealing with, I'm looking forward to use the rest of the sample.