Well, since LeisureGuy keeps raving about the stuff, I naturally had to pick up a tub of Okoto Organics shaving soap when I saw someone had some for sale over on /r/shave_bazaar. I do like it, although maybe not quite as much as he does.
The lather itself whipped up fairly easily, into a nice thick cream. Good amount of cushion, and rather good glide as well. The only downside is that it wasn’t all that stable; I found the lather started breaking down on me fairly quickly. Not nearly as bad as the last soap I reviewed, mind you, but enough that I felt the need to re-lather once per pass (I would imagine that this is largely due to the fact that it’s technically not a soap, as it wasn’t formed from the reaction of a alkali and a fatty acid, which they mention on their webpage). It did however seem to be quite good for the skin; quite nice and moisturized.
The scent is a nice crisp clean scent, which is kinda hard to describe. It’s mainly from the joboba oil and the aloe extract. I notice on their website, they say that the soap is “Made from 100% organically grown natural coconut, palm, soy and jojoba oil with aloe vera and pear essence”, but their ingredient listing doesn’t make any mention of pears or coconuts, or essences or oils thereof.
Anyways, it smells nice enough, kinda weakly so though. You can catch the occasional whiff of it while you’re shaving, but not much.
- 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
- 5/10 Scent Strength
- 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)
So, overall, I’m going to give this a 6/10. It’s decent enough, but I wouldn’t write home about it.
- Cost: It can be found for $18.95 AUD, although if you’re not in or near Australia, I think you can expect shipping to substantially raise the cost of this particular item. Alternately, this place out of Great Britain has it for £19.95, which is a good 50% more expensive when you do the currency conversions, but shipping might be better. They don’t have a North American distributor yet.
Gear used:
- Brush: The Colonel
- Razor: Vintage Bakelite Slant
- Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
- Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4
Ingredients: Jojoba extract, Deionized water, Proprietary no-ionic surfactants derived from soy and corn, Aloe vera, Glycerine
Palpz's Shaving Soap Reviews 