So I received a few new main stream soaps today...

[Mike_P]

New to me, but I'm sure many of you have used them.

Cella
Pre de Provence

I had been wanting to try some more main stream soaps, as even though my closet is full of ~35 different soaps, my favorites had been from the Artisans. (Mike's and QCS for soaps, GFT Coconut for a cream though very mainstream.) Being newer to the forums, I figure I'll share my opinion so that maybe others who were in my shoes can find my post in searches and have a little insight towards them. Many new people come here, and the Artisans are the first thing they are pointed to as there's tons of hype threads and they're easily obtainable.

Now with that said, I did my due diligence and searched and searched on both of these. Have seen lots of love and hate towards PDP and nothing but love towards Cella. So I figure these were a great place to start.

I'm about to do a test lather with each, but before I do, I just had to come and say OHHHH MYYYY GOD... Cella smells amazing. I'm almost scared to try it, just in-case it out performs my other top soaps, it may dethrone them. It's a sweet almond smell as many have described, BUT as soon as I held it to my nose, I knew the perfect description of the scent. It's practically identical to Jelly Belly Dr. Pepper jelly beans. I mean, no doubt about it, it's gotta be the same, sweet and savory and it just does it for me in every way, shape, and form! Love the red package as well, it's nice and bright and grabs your eye, you cannot miss it compared to other brands out there. I paid $17.90 via Amazon Prime. Maybe a little more than other places but the 2nd day air was included.

The PDP is a soapy smell. Hopefully it changes a bit when lathered, because I don't hate it, but it doesn't wow me. I've read many posts saying it smells of rosemary? I'm not getting that. I get like, free hotel bar of soap or maybe dove soap? Something like that and I know rosemary, heck I just cooked an amazing roast with super fresh rosemary just yesterday and this isn't giving me that smell. I've held them side by side, as well as prepackaged rosemary and neither match. This one cost me only $13.25 shipped via Amazon Prime as well, so it won't break the bank, and if it performs well then it's a steal at that price.

I'll update this post with some pictures of the lather from each and an update on performance from the tests. If anyone has any pointers towards making these both give amazing results, do tell! I'm hoping for great results from each!

[gwav64]

I just got the Pre de Provence because I loved the smell of the aftershave balm so much. Love the smell of the soap. To me it has a fresh soap and sage scent. I haven't tried it yet, but it will come up soon in my rotation. Cella is an excellent soap with very few ingredients. It leaves my face really smooth after shaving. It provides wonderful slickness and cushion during my shaves.

[Mike_P]

Alright, sorry for the delay. Ended up having to cook dinner!

So my brush for these tests was something that I restored. An ever ready 200T with a TGN 22mm Extra hair Fan. Love this brush and I always do my test lathers with it to get a good feel for new soaps.

First, the runners up! Brand new, never used, this is what they look like.


Started with the Cella. I love this stuff, took about 1 teaspoon of water and 30 seconds of mixing to get a great start to the lather. Another half teaspoon and it blew up. Mixed it for about 1-1.5 minutes. Great scent the whole time. Kept it's base almond scent but lost a little of it's sweetness, which is a good thing. I don't wanna feel like I'm putting candy or marsh mellow fluff on my face.

In regards to its texture? This is some slippery stuff. Nice and thick and about 30 seconds of loading the brush resulted in enough for probably 4 passes if needed. Couldn't feel my own finger prints, this stuff is SLICK and seems to give a nice layer of protection.

Here's some pictures of the lather from different angles. Good stuff.



PdP incoming in the next post.

[Mike_P]

Alright so the PdP. If you see above, the smell of Pre de Provence didn't strike me as something amazing. Bar of soap scent and the ingredients didn't sing anything special to me (No specific ingredients scent was apparent). Had high hopes for the scent that let me down after reading others reviews.

Now I will say this. The lather of this stuff is it's savior. I'll be keeping this in my closet and giving it a few good tries for sure. The same brush was used that was stated above. Restored Ever Ready with 22mm TGN extra hair Fan knot.

Soaked my brush for about a minute as well as about a tea spoon of water on the puck. This is some hard feeling soap to me. I then let my brush hang and drip. Took a small squeeze on half the brush in an attempt at a half Marco. Drained the water on the puck into my bowl, and told myself I will not be adding more water to this. Loaded from the puck for about 30 seconds. It was doing the watery bubbles type thing that you experience with the Marco technique due to the amount of water in the brush. Once that 30 seconds was up and I felt I had it under control in terms of all the soap on my brush, I hit the bowl.

Pre de Provence is a lather monster. 30 seconds and the lather was thick, had a nice shine to it, and there was SO much lather, I don't even know what I would do with it all. This stuff is majorly deceptive, but with the mind set of, just use more product, you can't go wrong. You'll always have enough.

Initial pick up of the lather.


And another angle. This stuff is crazy thick and keeps it's form. I attempted to fling it from the brush but it stuck tight.


I was worried that I had perhaps not hydrated it enough, but that fear was soon washed away. Left a good amount of lather in my bowl and then just did a quick squeeze of the brush, which resulted in this.


That hole between my first two fingers is actually a bubble. Once I felt this stuff I knew it wasn't under hydrated, and I assure you it was definitely NOT over worked either. This stuff produced an even thicker, more protective lather than the Cella. Chalk that up to a first time with Cella maybe, or getting lucky with the PdP, but there's no doubt in my mind that this is some awesome soap. It's a shame the pucks scent is so mediocre.

The feel of it on your skin is something special. I'm wanting to give this a shot when I shave tomorrow, and have some high hopes for it's shave performance.

As for the scent? It dissipated quite a bit when lathered and not on the puck. It still didn't smell like anything special to me, but it wasn't quite as strong of a soap bar scent. If it weren't redeemed by the quality lather, I probably would sell it. But since the lathers scent isn't too strong, I can look past it and give it a few good tries.

Bottom line for beginners?

Don't stop with just Artisan soaps. Try out everything, even mass produced stuff is quite a surprise. It's mass produced for a reason! They have great things going for them and the prices really aren't too bad.

[Mandina]

I appreciate reading about your appropriately flexible approach to lathering the different soaps; figuring out how the various soaps work is perhaps the most fun and rewarding experience for me in DE shaving. I've explored in the other direction: from the mainstream to the artisan, beginning with the wonderful Mike's Natural Soaps. I'm lucky to get to travel a fair amount in Europe, and I've organized my "mainstream" soap explorations by region. For example, the Provence-made soaps (PdP, Provence Sante, Savon du Midi); Austrian-German soaps (Haslinger, Calani, and maybe Dr. Dittmar remind me of Mike's Natural Soaps); etc. Since many of these are made by artisan or family firms, it's a blurry line between what's "artisan" and "mainstream." I've enjoyed all of them.

[turtle]

Nice review and pics. Great job!

[VT_Hokie]

Good looking lather you've got there my friend, enjoy the new soaps!

[cryhavoc]

Great job with the review and pics Mike!

[Mike_P]

Thanks guys!

Both of these soaps continue to impress me. I've been alternating them since they arrived and the only variable has been the bowl. Switched to a Dirty Bird Bill bowl yesterday with the PdP and using the same amounts of soap and water it took half the time to build lather and it seems like there was more of it. The only thing the bowl had that was different was the spiral shape at the bottom. I don't see how that made things better but, something was different.