Anyone with a lavender allergy?

After using Nancy Boy's Signature shave cream and AOS's Lavender shave cream, I have concluded that I am sensitive to lavender. Whenever I apply these creams to my face, I get a burning sensation (which is significantly more strong with AOS). Though I can get an otherwise great shave with the Nancy Boy, I found that the Lavender AOS cream resulted in me getting a lot of nicks and cuts. I've also used the Sandalwood AOS cream, which has worked very well for me.

I recently bought a tube of Speick shave cream since it's so inexpensive and gets favorable reviews. Still, due to my experience with AOS and Nancy Boy, I expected it to not agree with my skin. Instead, it felt fine on my face. In fact, my only issue with Speick was that after going over my face with my straight razor, the skin seemed dry and sticky rather than lubricated.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Tabac works great for me, and I know that has lavender in it as well.

Lavender is supposed to be good for sensitive skin, maybe too much lavender oil and it burns. I did notice too that products with a strong lavender scent (Castle Forbes for example) give me a bit of discomfort.

It sounds like what you have is a lavender sensitivity, rather than an outright allergy. That may be a semantic difference, as far as you're concerned, but an actual allergic reaction would likely be more severe that what you're describing. Still, a lavender sensitivity is not unheard of. I've known a few people who have it, and they have to avoid any grooming products that contain it. You're certainly not alone.

SirWhiskers said:

Lavender is supposed to be good for sensitive skin, maybe too much lavender oil and it burns.

Click to expand...

It's good for people who don't have a sensitivity to it. For those who do, any amount will cause an adverse reaction, albeit more oil tends to make the reaction worse. For those who aren't sensitive to it, more will not necessarily be bad. I can splash 100% pure lavender EO right on my face and have no ill effects from it at all.

PusherMan said:

However........QED lavender SS burned like hell. It smelled great but maybe the concentration of EO did it to me.

Click to expand...

Since you seem to tolerate lavender oil well, I would guess it was something else in the QED base that disagreed with your skin, rather than the concentration of lavender oil. Have you tried any other QED soaps?