Description
Zartgefuehl reformulated the scent of their nuveau classic saponified-shea-based shaving soap a year or so ago, now using a scent profile more similar to the old “Ziegen Bart” days of palm base! If you were a long time buyer of the Zart and liked that old deep Earthier scent, I’m confident you’ll prefer this scent profile to the citrus-dominant one that debuted with the migration to sodium shea butterate. We got shipped some fresh 200ml pieces as well! It is definitely still plentiful light citrusy top notes galore, fresh and clean and citrus by linen, but that seductive base of the old outlawed formulation, the ‘warm’ base note, you can feel it.
The odd nature of Men’s Secret dominates, as usual. It is saponified shea butter and coconut oil and just a little else, with some zinc and talc. There isn’t any other shaving soap like it. Some love it, some loathe it. Actually, a lot love it, as you can read with these screenshots which, I would say historically, are mundane. I personally will not consider it a stretch by any measure to say that this is the most unique shaving soap in the world until I see another one try its *base*, number one on the INCI call sheet, as ssb.
What Zartgefuehl does incredibly well is impart a sense of moisture *within* your skin during the shave, leaving absolutely no greasy feeling afterwards the way that some “superfatted” soaps [this is the term for when you complete the salt-and-fat saponification marriage but add in some extra fat(s), without any accompanying alkaloid(s), once initial soap-making chemical reactions finish], which have natural base pHs much more to the alkaline side, rely on exotic lipid$ thrown in post-saponification (and down the INCI chain of command!) It rinses away not as easily as Martin de Candre or Sampsons All Natural, but in a way that indicates it is abnormal.
This soap base is the least drying of any shaving soap base in the world, that much I do believe. If superfatting your soap formula was illegal above 1% this soap would reach superstardom, even if the consistency of its lather is challenging.
