Queen Charlotte Soaps – Green Irish Tweed type shaving cream

Tags

7/10, citrus, cologne, floral, Green Irish Tweed, iris, lemon, Queen Charlotte Soaps, sandalwood, shaving cream, verbena, violet

Today’s review is of Queen Charlotte Soaps’ Green Irish Tweed shaving cream. Now, I’ve reviewed their GIT soap before, and found it to be somewhat lacking, especially in scent strength. This fared better.

The cream’s lather was pretty good; fairly thick for a cream, it lathered up with a bit of elbow grease to something with a good balance of thickness and lather slickness, with a fairly wide “sweet spot” for acceptable water content to pull this off.

The scent seemed like a pretty decent Green Irish Tweed imitation (keeping in mind that I’ve never smelled the actual stuff!). For those who don’t know the scent, here’s how QCS describes it:

This is our rendition of Green Irish Tweed, the cologne created by Creed that is a favorite among the famous and royalty. With top notes of lemon and verbena, middle notes of iris and violet leaves, and base notes of Mysore sandalwood and ambergris, Green Irish Tweed smells refined and sophisticated.

Now, back to the soap version of the stuff, I could barely detect any scent whatsoever. This stuff is far better in that regard. This isn’t to say that it’s a strong scent, mind you, but at least you can tell it’s there, albeit with a fair amount of fading during the course of the shave.

• 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 7/10 Scent Strength
• 8/10 Lather Quality

All in all, it’s a decent enough if rather middle of the road cream. Not outstanding in any aspect, but it doesn’t fall flat anywhere either. 7/10 overall.

• Cost:I got this sample along with an order from MenEssentials, but you can also buy Queen Charlotte’s cream samples, 5 for $8. A full tub goes for $14.

Gear used:

• Brush: Wee Scott
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Lord Super Stainless

Ingredients: Water, saponified stearic acid, glycerin, saponified tallow, palm oil, olive oil, and coconut oil, aloe vera extract, fragrance oil, kaolin clay, phenoxyethanol (and) caprylyl glycol, vitamin E.

Queen Charlotte Soaps – Vostok shaving cream

Tags

4/10, menthol, peppermint, Queen Charlotte Soaps, shaving cream

To follow up yesterday’s QCS Vetiver soap review, I’ve now got the first of the shaving creams I’ve tried from Queen Charlotte Soaps; thus far I like it better than the soap samples. It seems to have a bigger “sweet spot” of water needed for a good combination of lather thickness and lubrication. It used, well, about an average amount for most other creams that I’ve come across. It’s a fairly thick cream, not sticky or goopy, honestly I would almost call it a really soft soap, consistency-wise at least.

As a reminder, I redid the lather quality scoring system, what used to be a 9/10 has been split into 9/10s (former “high 9s”) and 8/10s (former “low 9s”).

The scent, well, it’s menthol and peppermint. I generally like a bit of menthol, and enjoyed giving this cream a sniff.

It’s when I lathered it up and put it on my face that I rather stopped enjoying it. It’s strong. Very strong. “Enough menthol to make my eyes water” strong. I know that’s kinda this cream’s gig, and I should have expected what was coming. I mean, they say outright that “Vostok is a face-freezing blend of ice-cold peppermint and blizzard-like blasts of sub-zero menthol. We do not believe there exists a colder shaving product”. But I was still a bit unprepared for just how much freezing-action hit my face. It was just bloody cold.

If that’s what you’re going for, fill your boots. But I don’t think I’ll be trying this one again any time soon. Maybe to make a bit of superlather if I want to add a bit of a kick to some other scent, making sure not to use too much of course.

• 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 13/10 Scent Strength
• 8/10 Lather Quality

This wasn’t really what I consider to be a very pleasant shave. 4/10. Your mileage of course, may vary if you really like the cooling action.

• Cost: Queen Charlotte’s cream samples are 5 for $8, but with a surcharge for certain scents, bringing the price for this particular sample to $2.10. A full tub will run you $16.

Gear used:

• Brush: Ecotools Kabuki Finishing Brush
• Razor: 1966 Gillette Tech
• Blade: Gillette 7 O’clock Black
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Water, saponified stearic acid, glycerin, saponified tallow, palm oil, olive oil, and coconut oil, aloe vera extract, essential oil(s), kaolin clay, phenoxyethanol (and) caprylyl glycol, vitamin E. Vostok contains menthol crystals.

Queen Charlotte Soaps – Vetiver shaving soap

Tags

6/10, Queen Charlotte Soaps, shaving soap, vetiver

The soap lathered up much in the same way that other samples I’ve tried did. I would have preferred a thicker cream, and QCS is, IMHO, too easy to over-dilute. I usually end up having to fiddle with the lather more than most soaps, to get the balance of water just right to get enough glide with a reasonable amount of thickness. Still, I’m able to get a good shave out of it, just not what I consider a great shave.

Just a quick reminder, I revamped the lather quality scoring system, any former 8/10s or below have been bumped down a point.

The vetiver scent was pretty good. A fair bit earthier than some others that I’ve come across, which I rather liked. But it just wasn’t strong enough, I had to strain to even pick out the scent while shaving, other than the occasional whiff here or there.

• 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 6/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality

So that’ll work out to be a 6/10 overall. Good enough, I suppose, but there’s
better options available.

• Cost: QCS Samples come in a 5 pack for $10, but with a surcharge for certain scents, so this sample shown one costs $2.50. Or you can get a puck of the stuff for $15 (extra for a tub or wooden bowl).

Gear used:

• Brush: Ecotools Kabuki Finishing Brush
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Gillette 7 O’clock Black
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Saponified tallow, water, saponified castor oil, shea butter, glycerin, saponified stearic acid, cocoa butters, coconut oil, essential oil(s), saponified avocado oil, palm oil, olive oil, aloe vera extract, kaolin clay, lanolin, vitamin E.

Queen Charlotte Soaps – Cayman shaving soap

Tags

7/10, bay rum, Queen Charlotte Soaps, shaving soap, spice

Oh, ok. Don’t mind if I do.

Hallelujah! A soap from Queen Charlotte that is neither too weakly scented, or discontinued!

I mean, I knew that they could make a reasonably strongly scented soap. I’d tried their Monaco, and it was strong enough, and their Hanami was probably one of the few soaps that I found too strong. But thus far, the other soaps I’ve tried from them have been anything but strongly scented.

Not so with the Cayman. It’s a quite nice rendition of a classic Bay Rum scent, something which I’m almost always a fan of. It carries over to the lather fairly well, reasonably strong with only a bit of fading during the shave.

I’m starting to think I need to give previous reviews a quick once-over before I shave with a brand of soap I’ve used before. Because I totally ended up using too much water for the first go-around on this one. It’s kind of easy to over-shoot the sweet spot and use too much, which resulted in it being too runny for my taste. But a bit of fiddling, and I was able to get a nice shave out of it.

• 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 8/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, I give it a 7/10. Good shave, good scent, nothing to complain about here.

• Cost: Samples go for 5 for $10, with a surcharge for some scents including this one, so $2.50 was paid for the sample shown. A full sized puck is $15, plus $7 if you want a wooden bowl or $2.50 for a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: Ecotools Kabuki Finishing Brush (trying out Leisureguy’s recommendation for a cheap beginner brush)
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Feather Hi-Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Saponified tallow, water, saponified castor oil and shea butter, glycerin, saponified stearic acid, cocoa butter, coconut oil, essential oil(s), saponified avocado oil, palm oil, and olive oil, aloe vera extract, kaolin clay, lanolin, vitamin E.

Queen Charlotte shaving soap

Tags

6/10, floral, Queen Charlotte Soaps, shaving soap, wood

Our next offering is Queen Charlotte Soaps’ namesake scent. Since “Queen Charlotte” isn’t all that descriptive, we’ll start off with what they have to say about it:

A heavenly scent made from only the most rare absolutes and essential oils, Queen Charlotte starts with sweet top notes. As the scent grows, delicate floral notes come through. We have added just the right amount of earthy and woody notes to complete this exquisite scent.

This seems like a fairly accurate description. Sweet florals and woodsy undertones. It’s a very nice combination. And once again, one that I wish I could make out easier. It was a better than what I’ve seen from their Green Irish Tweed and the Key Lime, as at least I could make out a faint scent of the lather while shaving, but I do mean faint.

It’s definitely not a very thirsty soap; other than what was on the brush while loading, I found I only needed to add the tiniest bit of water to get the lather to a quite reasonable amount of glide, while staying quite thick. It made for a nice shave.

• 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 6/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, I give it a 6/10. Good shave, but again, there’s other soaps out there that give great shaves and deliver with the scent. I’ve got an order in for some of their creams, hopefully they pack a bit more punch.

• Cost: I paid $2.85 for a quarter ounce sample. A full sized puck starts at $17, a plus $7 if you want a wooden bowl or $2.50 for a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Vintage Bakelite Slant
• Blade: Lord Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Saponified tallow, water, saponified castor oil and shea butter, glycerin, saponified stearic acid, cocoa butter, and coconut oil, essential oil(s), saponified avocado oil, palm oil, and olive oil, aloe vera extract, kaolin clay, lanolin, vitamin E.

Queen Charlotte Soaps – Key Lime soap

Tags

5/10, citrus, key lime, Lime, Queen Charlotte Soaps, shaving soap

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Or, if you’re an American, Columbus Day. Or if you’re neither American or Canadian, Monday. Today I’m going with Queen Charlotte Soaps’ Key Lime formulation, based on a recommendation from a fellow redditor. To start, this is what QCS says about their soap:

With a nice citrusy pop to it, this lime scent smells like freshly cut limes and lime zest. Unlike other lime scents, ours is dry, rather than sweet.

Once again, I found this scent to be lacking in strength. It wasn’t nearly as bad as their Green Irish Tweed formulation was, since I found that one to be essentially scent-less, but the soap didn’t have a strong smell of limes, lime zest, sweet dry or otherwise. What I could smell smelled pretty decent, mind you, but it definitely didn’t have enough to carry over anything but the faintest of hints to the lather.

I’m finding this to be somewhat frustrating, as of the 4 soaps from Queen Charlotte that I’ve tried thus far, the only two that were strong enough are two that have since been discontinued. Their not-available-anymore Monaco (my review here) was just a bit shy of strong enough, and their likewise discontinued Hanami (which I might get around to reviewing if I start running out of soaps that are still in production… a few years down the road at the rate I’m ordering stuff) was, if anything, a tad too strong. I know they can do it, hopefully a few of the other samples I’ve got turn out better.

I did find that it lathered better than the other QCS soaps I’ve tried out thus far. It turned up nice and thick, and really slick. This wasn’t a soap that required a whole lot of water for the lather, just whatever was left on my brush after flicking the excess off was enough to lather and and give plenty of glide. It didn’t produce as much in the way of volume, but made up for it in cushion. Quite a nice shave.

• 7/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 4/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, I give it a 5/10. Hopefully one of these days I’ll be able to find a Lime shaving soap I really like, but this isn’t it.

• Cost: I paid $2 for a quarter ounce sample. A full sized puck starts at $13, a plus $7 if you want a wooden bowl or $2.50 for a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor:Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Astra Superior Platinum
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Saponified tallow, water, saponified castor oil and shea butter, glycerin, saponified stearic acid, cocoa butter, and coconut oil, essential oil(s), saponified avocado oil, palm oil, and olive oil, aloe vera extract, kaolin clay, lanolin, vitamin E.

Queen Charlotte Soaps – Monaco soap

Tags

6/10, citrus, Discontinued, floral, Queen Charlotte Soaps, shaving soap

So, this is somewhat embarrassing. You see, I gave myself two shaves with this soap, as per usual, and then went to go do the review. I headed over to the Queen Charlotte Soaps website, so I could link to the product I’m reviewing, and found that they’d discontinued the scent (along with one other of the soaps I have from them). So, here it goes, a review for a soap you can’t buy anymore.
From the horse’s own mouth (rescued via google cache):

Monaco opens up with an irresistible blast of juicy citrus and precious neroli. As the scent grows, sweet ylang ylang and floral notes emerge. In time, one can also detect earthy and grassy notes. All of this creates a delicate, yet extremely complex scent.

First off, the lather is rather thin. With a fair bit more effort than I’d expect from most other soaps, I was able to conjure up what I’d consider to be a medium thickness lather. It’ll do the trick if you’re not one of those folks who needs a whole lot of cushion to their shave. It gave a reasonably slick shave.

The scent was fairly pleasant, although I can’t say that I agree with the description above. It certainly didn’t open up with a blast of citrus, if anything the “earthy notes” dominated, with the citrus and florals detectable as an undertone. It all came together in something I’d consider a bit spicy. It’s something that I’d probably use on a day that I feel I need a bit of a pick me up.

Strength-wise, it was fairly easily, but not strongly, detectable during the shave, and did not linger.

• 7/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 8/10 Scent Strength
• 6/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, I give it a 6/10. It is definitely not recommended if you have hard water, as I anticipate a lot more difficulty working up a good lather. It’s a pretty nice scent, probably not one that would make it into my regular rotation, but I will at least use it on occasion. Until it’s gone, at which point I can’t get anymore because they stopped making it.

• Cost: I paid $2 for a quarter ounce sample. A full sized puck of other scents ranges from $13 – $17 dollars. 

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Merkur 37C Slant
• Blade: Shark Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4