It was my birthday on the second, and I got two things to further my
adventures, the first was a cutthroat razor, which I’ll be reviewing shortly,
but the other was something I have been interested in trying out since I first
heard about it.
Mitchells Wool Fat Soap.
The name of it was what caused my curiosity, after all, we’ve all seen
fight club, so we know that fat gets made into soap, but the concept of wool
fat was a curious one, so it was with interest that I tried this.
Before I get to the review of the soap itself, some attention must be
paid to the packaging. I’ve already got
some Old Taylors Lemon and Lime, and a number of cases of Gillette’s shaving
foam, all of which lathers up very quickly and comes in a neat little set of
plastic packaging. The Mitchells arrives
in a ceramic pot with excellent presentation, like someone’s taken the time to
put the packaging together rather than mass producing it. It’s the little touches that make all the difference
sometimes, and in the matter of packaging, more than most.
The scent is subtle, clean, neither sandalwood nor musk but something
in between, not strong enough to leave a lingering residue but certainly enough
to be pleasing. It doesn’t lather as quickly
or with as much volume as Old Taylors Lemon and Lime, but the cream that it
does produce is thicker and goes on more easily, providing a thicker layer and
a smoother shave. The interesting thing
about it is that when using the Old Taylors, I’d whisk up a good amount and
that would be enough to make several passes and recovers when it came to going
over for clean up strokes. With the wool
fat soap, it really didn’t, and I had to put on a reasonable amount more soap on
to make a lather. Then when it came to going over again, I had to mix up
another batch to get enough for the second set of strokes.
However, against that, the shave that I got was a far easier one. Those who have been reading for a while will
know of the problems I had with the Shark blades, whereas today, using the same
blade combination, not a single issue, and my face didn’t feel dry and in need
of moisturiser in the aftermath.
Overall, quite impressed, it makes for a very different shaving
experience to the old taylors and I’ll be interested to see what sort of
results I get when I try it with some of the other blades (and quite possibly
some of the other razors I’ve been looking at), and with the new brush that I
got given for my Birthday.
