Initial impressions of Pen's EF

**Sunburst** · 04-03-2011, 03:55 AM

So, yesterday the wife and I packed up my Mom and our baby and headed out to Cambridge for the day. Stumbled into a Penhaligon's store while we were out. I'm a sucker, so I bought a refill of EF. It is the non-tallow new formulation.

(Big parenthetical disclaimer about the pictures. I'm trying to figure out how to make my phone's camera suck less, so all of these pics are also me trying different settings on my phone. Consequently, they're not exactly the world's best pictures.)

Did a practice lather last night with the Erasmic brush that I bought for SWMBO and am currently breaking in.

I was surprised at how well it whipped up considering that was that brushes second lather and it's a super-cheap boar. Felt fairly slick, looked good and smelled amazing as you would expect.

So, this morning I woke up very excited to give it a shot. The puck didn't fit my empty TOBS bowl, so inverted in a cappuccino mug it went. Loaded my Parker pure (which is turning out to be a real shocker for the money I paid...) for about a minute and proceeded to face lather.

This is a bit thirstier than I had anticipated and I ended up adding a pretty healthy amount of water between passes. It is fairly hard to describe. If your technique is good, you'd probably like this very much. It feels very nice on the face. It's moderately slick and seems to be pretty cushiony. I still haven't felt out exactly how much water to get in there. Next time I'm not going to have my brush set to MWF water level. Which is nearly dry.

No skipping, but no residual slickness after the razor passes over a spot. Whereas with something like Speick cream or MWF you can get away with a double stroke over an area and not really think anything of it. You notice with this soap. It's not agonizing or anything, but it doesn't leave anything behind.

After four passes with my Merkur OC this is what I had left.

Looking forward to using it again tomorrow with more water.

Also, it seems to not do a great deal of moisturizing. That's fine for me, I have an oily mug anyways. I'll actually get to use a balm.

Also, I didn't get as close as I normally would from my Sunday four-passer. However, this was the first use and I'm still trying to learn it.

Do I think it was worth the 21 quid I paid for it? The jury's out on that. That's a lot of money for a puck of soap. I'll let you all know after I figure out the soap a bit better.

Anyone else using the newer Pen's soaps want to chime in?

**Optometrist** · 04-03-2011, 04:09 AM

This is one soap I've wanted to try but resisted due to the large number of negative comments. I would be intersted to hear of your future views.

**beginish** · 04-03-2011, 05:51 AM

Originally Posted by Optometrist

This is one soap I've wanted to try but resisted due to the large number of negative comments. I would be intersted to hear of your future views.

+1. And this does appear to be an improvement over the initial reviews of the soap, which had very experienced soap users reporting it to be impossible to lather. Thread subscribed.

**Sunburst** · 04-04-2011, 09:55 AM

Shave two with veggie EF.

Started with a wetter brush today. Cut load time to about 30 seconds.

Wow, what a shave. Not as close as I normally get, but the slickness is starting to get there. I still need more water as I haven't found the sweet spot yet. Still probably the most cushion I've ever felt from a soap.

Still had a good bit of lather left after a three-pass shave. I look forward to finding the sweet spot. I have a feeling that this will be a soap that prefers to be less thick on the face, into what would be too wet with other soaps.

I'm still troubled, however, with the lack of closeness in shave with this soap. I know I'm still getting a feel for it, and it will probably get better as I learn the lather. Additionally, my face felt more moisturized after the shave than it did yesterday. May have been a fluke or the increased water in the lather helped. I don't know.

Razor for today's shave was my R89 (RP Personna) with my Merkur 15C's handle on it. Normally a 3 pass, BBS except neck setup.

Change for tomorrow: Wetter is better. (Fingers crossed.)

**Optometrist** · 04-04-2011, 09:59 AM

It looks promising.

**FL shaver** · 04-04-2011, 02:14 PM

Following...

Have you ever tried DR Harris Arlington? Wondering how it compares. Sure looks like a fine lather. How is the scent?

**Sunburst** · 04-04-2011, 07:39 PM

I've not tried Arlington yet. It's on the short list though.

The scent? In a word, amazing. It is scented fairly heavily, but not overpoweringly so. It does hang around on the skin just a bit longer than other stuff I've used. It won't jump out and let you know it's there, but if you wash your hands with leftover lather, you'll get 10-15 minutes of faint smell on them.

Shave three is in about a half-hour. The timing of my morning routine dictates that the saga will go unposted until I get home from work.

**Sunburst** · 04-04-2011, 09:19 PM

Okay, so I got around a few minutes early today so I could write this up while it was still fresh.

First use was let brush drip out and two or three good flicks. This is what I do for MWF and intial usings of soaps. Second was drip out and a slow-motion pump. Today, just a drip out.

Thirty seconds of loading and then face lathered for approximately a minute. I still dipped the brush twice. Once during the initial lather and once before my second pass.

I'm still not quite to the sweet spot, but I'm getting close. This made a crazy amount of lather. Starting to note some slickness, glide was pretty good and cushion seemed to decrease a smidge.

Three passes again today with a light touchup on the neck at the end. Used my slant today. Any irritation was purely my fault, haven't used my slant in a while. It's either got an RP Personna or a Boots blade in it. Got nearly, and I mean really, really close to BBS today.

Best so far with this soap. Overall, I'm quite enjoying the usage of this soap. I like having to figure things out a bit for myself. I could see tomorrow's lather being on the money. I'm hoping anyways.

This week will be EF + my Parker brush. Weekend will be my 830. Next week will be superlathering. Definitely with RSC and if I get down to Cambridge some Body Shop Maca Root cream.

Have a good day, folks.