Soap drying out the Skin?

So I recently picked up some English Leather Soap (on a ROPE!).

Tried it tonight, and it really felt like it sucked all the natural body oils out of my skin.
..and then I remembered why I hadn't used bar soap (of any kind), for YEARS!

Is this normal? Is there some important step in soap that I'm missing? I haven't had this problem with shaving soap, but that's a different animal I suppose.

I ended up dousing myself in hair conditioner to ease the dryness.

Any thoughts?

It's certainly possible. Something in the soap (heavy scent?) could also have annoyed your skin.

Try something a bit more moisturizing and see if you have the same problem, maybe something from Trader Joe's, or one of the Sues, or...

Best of luck.

J

Some soap can be very drying. If you do choose the soap over shower gel route, however, there are plenty of moisturising soaps out there.

If you have a Body Shop in your area, I would try out their Olive Oil bar or their Shea bar. If you don't like their scent, then the Mango bar smells great and is also very moisturising. The bars are in what I would consider to be the middle price bracket of soap, and should last between 6 and 8 weeks of daily showering.

Alternatively, you could pick up a bar of Pear's or Palmolive for very little money and these shouldn't dry you out either. These are in the bottom level, price-wise, but should both last at least a month.