Shaving soaps containing olive oil .

... are crap! (Excuse my french)
I've recently bought a puck of Thiers Issard Le Boise and a puck of Mr Natty Silver Label as I wanted to try some new and different scents.
Usually I use Klar, Mühle and La Toja and they all lathers wonderfully providing great glide and ghost lather. It was rightout impossible for me to create anyting that would resemble lather. It was thin, transparent and dry disappearing on one side of my face before I had lathered the other side.

Just a word of warning ;-)

I've learned from first hand experience, and from the good folks at B&B that any shave soap with olive oil as a first ingredient is very tough to lather. Dare I say impossible.

typically if it is further down the ingredient list there is no issue.

Cold River Soap Works - Oliva says hi! Its not the inclusion of olive oil but the lack of knowledge of the artisans. Search google for CRSW Oliva reviews........... Proof that is not olive oil.

That old saw about olive oil ruining lathers has been completely debunked!!

Still true for almost all soaps. However, there are at least two very competent shaving soaps in which saponified olive oil is one of the first two or three ingredients. Nanny's Silly Soaps makes one, and the other is Oliva, made by Larry at Cold River Soap Works.

Oliva was made with almost exactly a 1:1 ratio of steric acid to olive oil, and those are the first two ingredients. It also contains no coconut oil, amazingly. Despite this, it lathers just as well as any shaving soap on the market; better than the vast majority. Truly a top tier shave soap lather.

So, I guess the point is that it's not the inclusion of olive oil per se that is making the soaps bad. It's that the soap maker doesn't really know how to make a good shaving soap.

Oliva is definitely one of the best shaving soaps out there. Just finished a great shave with it about 15 minutes ago. It's awesome!

OK! There might be two olive oil based soaps that can be brought to produce lather, but out of how many?
There's always an exception to anything, but still I'd say, avoid 'em.

Once I get through the majority of my current stockpile in about 4-5 years , I'll be trying some of these reviled olive oil soaps like Joshua Tree and such.

Jan Martin Petersen said:

OK! There might be two olive oil based soaps that can be brought to produce lather, but out of how many?
There's always an exception to anything, but still I'd say, avoid 'em.

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Agree. I'd say avoid them all except for NSS and CRSW's Oliva.

If it were a soapmaker unknown to me producing olive oil soaps, I would be wary. They would have to have a proven reputation to make me try it. Always nice to see some experienced soapmakers be an exception to the rule though.

Jan Martin Petersen said:

... are crap! (Excuse my french)
I've recently bought a puck of Thiers Issard Le Boise and a puck of Mr Natty Silver Label as I wanted to try some new and different scents.
Usually I use Klar, Mühle and La Toja and they all lathers wonderfully providing great glide and ghost lather. It was rightout impossible for me to create anyting that would resemble lather. It was thin, transparent and dry disappearing on one side of my face before I had lathered the other side.

Just a word of warning ;-)

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sorry for your disappointment.
have you tried to return the items to your retailer?

What is it about olive oil that usually prohibits a good lather? I have also heard that having olive oil in your pre shave oil can also ruin the lather on top of it but I'm not sure if that true or not.

I agree that a majority of shaving soaps with olive oil have lather stability problems. However, some have mastered the recipe and it does make a nice slick lather.

Ones that come to mind that have olive oil but Are great soaps are:

CRSW
The Shave Den

TSD soap is the only one I have tried that makes a wonderful lather for having olive oil so high on the ingredient list. I hope to try CRSW one day, when I use up some of the bottomless soaps in the den.

Marcos1 said:

What is it about olive oil that usually prohibits a good lather? I have also heard that having olive oil in your pre shave oil can also ruin the lather on top of it but I'm not sure if that true or not.

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It's simply a characteristic of olive oil soap. I'm not sure what it is about the chemical makeup of olive oil that inhibits lather formation, though. I do know that 100% olive oil soap (known as castile) is a mild, gentle soap that most would describe its lather as slimy. For all that, castile is a great soap.

Ginger's Garden also makes a decent soap with olive oil in it. Though it's not a main ingredient.

I generally avoid olive oil soaps though.

I am also sorry for your poor experience with olive oil soaps. That said, I have CRSW Oliva and it lathers wonderfully! Larry from CRSW has stated that they worked on Oliva for a while before releasing it. It truly is an excellent soap and I'm sure CRSW would not have released it if it was anything less. Better luck in the future!