What happened to the love, even reverence for British soaps?

Mr. Scruffy said:

Most have reformulated their soaps to exclude tallow.

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It is a trend in the EU indeed to make soaps, fragrances, and other cosmetic products "safer" by taking the characteristic substances out, like oakmoss. I wonder if the responsible politicians understand how they are crippling the once so stellar products.

Alas, making the world "safe" by regulating the smallest details, while ignoring the big problems, is something that has plagued the EU for at least the last 30 years.

Of course companies reformulate as well so save costs. But I don't think that was the reason for the 3T soaps.

Much love for DR Harris Marlborough soap and cream here. When you nail the ratio with water, they're as good as anything out there.

john parker said:

I heard that they were producing English Fern in the new formulation!

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Two weeks ago Penhaligons responded to my inquiry to say EF shaving soap has indeed been discontinued. Earlier, I had asked The English Shaving Company about EF shaving soap, and they told me that they can no longer get EF soap from Penhaligons because it is no longer being produced. Sorry about that!

Rats again (from other Penhalgion English Fern thread)! But am sure that I will survive this; never have tried it so won't really know what I have missed.

well, imo, this is a men's fashion world, and fashions come and go.
certainly there have been reformulations; so? a lot of non-English brands have also reformulated.
And a lot of the new artisanal soaps are vegetable based.
The Brits still deserve a lot of respect.
Along with the Italians, the French, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Japanese, the Dutch, the Scandinavians....maybe, even, some Americans.

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Once again. Dynamite shot.

And beer.

I would like to see bacon incorporated into one of your theme shots.

The love still lives here!

Have found only a (very) few Artisan soaps to be worth the time.

August West said:

Once again. Dynamite shot.

And beer.

I would like to see bacon incorporated into one of your theme shots.

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Thanks!

Hmmm...bacon, I've not done that before, would be nice.
Perhaps matched with the lard-based shave soap from, I think, Sterling?
But, did you catch the cinnamon roll and Old Spice mug?
Great pastry and coffee, on a cold Florida morning!

The finer things in life. Where is the place to go on B&B to see member photographs?

MWF love ebs and flows. It's not a great soap in my book. It works, but the lather is inferior to a number of other products.

Dr.H. has its fans but it was always kind of the cheaper english perfume house soap. So it's not as drooled over as some of the $50-75 soaps were. Why that is, you have to decide.

As for the rest? They all screwed their soaps up badly. Penns apparently fixed it now, but with the high cost it's going to be hard for them to win their fans back after all the bowls of crap they sold.

SliceOfLife said:

As for the rest? They all screwed their soaps up badly. Penns apparently fixed it now, but with the high cost it's going to be hard for them to win their fans back after all the bowls of crap they sold.

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My thoughts exactly. I've felt burned after buying the English Fern reformulation, its going to take some stellar reviews to bring me back to Sartorial or BB.

Ultimately its the extremely poor reformulations that sunk the reputation of some of the British brands, which were done incompetently. Not all reformulations are necessarily bad, AOS recently reformulated their legendary tallow soap into something that is decent. It might not be as good as the old version, but its a excellent vegetable oil soap that comes close.

DR Harris still getting plenty of love in my den! Probably my most used soap!!

That's unfortunate news. I've been working through soaps I picked up during a massive binge back in 2009. I found the reformulated GFT soaps at that time to be alright. They were very popular on the forum at the time. Right now I've got about ten unopened pucks in my stash and all but 1 puck of CADE are made in the UK.

Good points by all, however some of the very best artisan soaps being produced currently are made sans tallow, lashaving, HTGAM Synergy, and PPF, to name a few. The artisan makers have the advantage of taking direct customer feedback and applying the changes immediately because they are making small batches. Many of these soap makers have improved exponentially from batch to batch. Stirling for example was was virtually unusable until its 3'rd generation of soap. PPF was not good in hard water, heard the complaints and made the change. This phenomenon is very much like the craft beer revolution, the stuff made fresh in small batches is a labor of of love and is much higher quality than the old recipe mass produced brews that are made more with P&L in mind.

I sing the praises of DR Harris soaps on this forum pretty regularly and I know I'm not the only one. Mitchell's and Harris are still my favorites over all others. What does seem to happen here is that people get caught up talking about what is new, especially in artisan soaps. It's kind of a flavor of the month thing. The classics, however, never go out of style.

rand77 said:

My thoughts exactly. I've felt burned after buying the English Fern reformulation, its going to take some stellar reviews to bring me back to Sartorial or BB.

Ultimately its the extremely poor reformulations that sunk the reputation of some of the British brands, which were done incompetently. Not all reformulations are necessarily bad, AOS recently reformulated their legendary tallow soap into something that is decent. It might not be as good as the old version, but its a excellent vegetable oil soap that comes close.

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The main problem I have with the product formulations is not that they goofed, but that they did not detect it before selling the products to their customers. Every company can make a mistake in changing the product formula. But these soaps were so bad that any decent QC should have caught it before shipping the new products.

Customers deserve better.

Frankly, I think they've gone down hill ever since they gave up India.

Reformulation = kills love, reputations & reverence.

MWF & D.R Harris are probably the best of the remaining British soaps, and for the price, their are better soaps on the market.

I just got the new floris 89 soap & it is outstanding so they have made a turn around after four years of crap.

Could you describe the Floris lather? I have heard it's very thin yet slick.