Martin de Candre - The best soap ever?

A great example of "each to his own" .

MdC is indeed the best in my view. But like at least one other person has commented, Mike's Natural Soap is not even on my list of good soaps. I put the sticks (Arko, Palmolive, LaToja) near the top, as well as Proraso Green.

Bit of a side-track, but where do you get 2 pucks of MWF for $20 delivered? I need to know of this wonderful place.
In terms of MdC, I'd love to try it one day, but I'll have to wait a little while, as I've already spent far too much this year on shaving soaps.

The most impressive feature of MdC, in my opinion, is that you can get a thick, yorgurt-like lather by loading your brush for only 15 seconds, compared to 30 seconds for most soaps (and 45 seconds for MWF).

Maybe that's the reason why one jar lasts so long versus other soaps.

In terms of performance, it's magnificent, but still at the same level of other favorites of mine: Arko, Valobra, Cella, MWF.

macintoshBR said:

The most impressive feature of MdC, in my opinion, is that you can get a thick, yorgurt-like lather by loading your brush for only 15 seconds, compared to 30 seconds for most soaps (and 45 seconds for MWF).

Maybe that's the reason why one jar lasts so long versus other soaps.

In terms of performance, it's magnificent, but still at the same level of other favorites of mine: Arko, Valobra, Cella, MWF.

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Load it for the same amount of time you use with your other soaps. You'll be surprised how much better the lather gets. Even loading for a full minute will make a tub of the stuff last for half a year of use (been there, done that. I think I'm one of a very small group of people the managed to see the bottom of a Mdc jar).

Mdc is the best soap I used so far, with adp at the second spot.

MdC is very, very good and I like it a lot. That said, IMO MWF is better. I get lather with The Fat the likes of which other soaps just don't deliver.

This thread is killing me! I have enough soaps and creams for all of 2016, but now I have to go get either some MdC or Mike's.

BRITD said:

Since it is one of the priciest soaps available, it can only be considered for the best category when the "money is no object" disclaimer is added. Just like I have no interest in blowing my nose into a hand woven by Chilean Monks, Vicuna wool disposable facial tissue, I also have no interest in a $75 soap that is only going to eventually be flushed down the drain.

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For me really no shaving soap is all that expensive even Martin de Candre. If you think about it a jar of Mdc can last some people up to a year. So for argument's sake say it's lasts six months. So for 15 minutes a day I enjoy the soap during my morning shave every day for six months. If I figure on average 30 days a month that gives me 180 days. Fifteen minutes a day for 180 days comes out to 45 hours. So for $65 I truly enjoyed the soap for 45 hours.

I've taken my wife out to dinner several times. Say we go out and have a nice dinner at a nice restaurant the bill might be around $65. For that $65 I enjoyed a nice meal that likely took about 2 hours. So for the time that that $65 lasted I got two hours of enjoyment.

Sure there are cheaper soaps but there are also cheaper restaurants. My point it that for something that you enjoy for somewhere between 45 and 90 hours is the cost really that high.

Let's look at it another way. We're talking between 36 and 18 cents a shave from a jar of MdC when you consider the duration that it lasts. If I buy a tub or RazoRock soap for $10 it will last me between 30 to 40 shaves. So that's 33 cents to 25 cents a shave. So considering the duration of which a jar lasts you could actually be paying more for RazoRock than you are for MdC.
But since you are buying six tubs at $10 each everyone thinks it's a better deal than spending $65 all at once for MdC.

Although the math contradicts this all said and done somehow RazoRock is considered an excellent value while MdC is considered overpriced.

MDC is not as expensive as most people think. It's less than $50 a jar on their site. Shipping is about $20 for 1 jar or 3.

So if you get 3 jars it will cost you about $170 shipped. That's 3 years of soap. That's about $5 a month.

When was the last time you pampered yourself with DAILY luxury for less than the price of a latte per MONTH!

chris.hale said:

MdC is very, very good and I like it a lot. That said, IMO MWF is better. I get lather with The Fat the likes of which other soaps just don't deliver.

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For me, the lather from MWF and MdC is equally good, and the scent of MdC superior, but the way my face feels after using MWF is just better.

Le père Lucien should be very similar and less pricey. The scent is truly lovely!

Benoni said:

Le père Lucien should be very similar and less pricey. The scent is truly lovely!

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+1
From France- Pere Lucien and MdC are the best choice!

I tried a sample of the MdC lavender. IMO, it is good stuff, but Speick is easily as good (performance, scent, etc.), much less expensive, and much more readily available. I won't be picking up a jar.

OP, great review. Thanks.

Steelman said:

When was the last time you pampered yourself with DAILY luxury for less than the price of a latte per MONTH!

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Only a matter of time till someone introduced the "price of a latte" analogy. For the price of just 5 latte's a day:

- I can buy Ouch a herd of goats and a instructional goat milking video DVD
- I can lease a Porsche 911 turbo
- I can stay in the Presidential suite at the waldorf Astoria.......... see where I am going with this?

MdC... Best Soap Ever???

If you asked me two years ago, I'd have said yes. But now? No! There are too many great artisan soaps out there that perform just as well (if not better) at a fraction of the cost. Many artisans have now cloned the formula, and you can now get almost the exact same product, albeit a different scent, for mush less money. I have a tub of MdC, and still love it, but will never purchase it again.

BRITD said:

Only a matter of time till someone introduced the "price of a latte" analogy. For the price of just 5 latte's a day:

- I can buy Ouch a herd of goats and a instructional goat milking video DVD
- I can lease a Porsche 911 turbo
- I can stay in the Presidential suite at the waldorf Astoria.......... see where I am going with this?

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I'm not seeing it. If I figure one Latte is $5. Then one Latte per month is $5 per month or $60 a year vs five Latte'sper day ($750 per month or about $9125 a year) is quite a bit different. I don't drink Latte's but I do shave and I can't shave anywhere near the number of times a day it would take to go through that many Lattes.

You can't buy ouch even one goat for $5 a month, let alone a heard of them and a goat milking dvd.
You certainly can't lease a Porsche for $5 a month.
The Presidential Suite at the Waldorf Astoria can't be had for anywhere near that price either.

I have a lot of soaps and depending on what I choose on a given day my favorites do change. Some days it's a $70 soap other days it's a $10 soap and some days it's an $8 soap. It just depends on what I'm in the mood for. I do think that MdC is expensive but when you consider how long a jar lasts the price per shave comes way, way down. Maybe even lower than some of the soaps that people think are inexpensive or a great value. Think of it being like going to Costco for laundry detergent. Sure it sucks when you get to the checkout with that big expensive box of soap but when you're not buying soap for the next 8 months it all evens out in the long run.

MdC is good stuff. Best soap ever? Not so sure about that.

If you really want a un-biased opinion, as I have not tried it please feel free to send me a jar and I will endeavor to give an opinion based on pure science LOL

.... too obvious?

I see people easily recovering 90%+ of their costs by selling their MdC jars on BST. It's almost a risk-free investment.

Speick stick is one of my all- time favorites and the first soap that actually challenged Tabac for 'best soap' for me. And my new favorite is La Toya stick; at least as good as Speick stick in performance with a nicer scent IMO.

MdC may well be an excellent shaving soap but I really have to wonder if it can live up to the hype created about it. I have not tried it myself but do find that often increasing the price of something leads a lot of people to suddenly find it a superior product. Jess' sayin'

Brian

lmarkow said:

I tried a sample of the MdC lavender. IMO, it is good stuff, but Speick is easily as good (performance, scent, etc.), much less expensive, and much more readily available. I won't be picking up a jar.

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