When did soap get so complicated?
Expensive soaps have turned handwashing into a luxurious experience, writes Tyler Watamanuk
FOR some time, status in the First World has not been signalled just with expensive clothes and designer handbags but also with so-called elevated versions of everyday items: an elegant pour-over coffee kit in place of a humble Mr Coffee machine; dinky house ferns replaced by exotic Monstera plants; and in recent infamy, drinking straws and paper clips from Tiffany.
Now, as the wretched heat of summer settles, let us consider what has happened to soap.
Remember Softsoap? Ivory? “You’re not fully clean unless you’re Zestfully clean”? Camay, all over?
These plastic bottles and softening cakes were once a boring household staple, little considered, casually tossed in the supermarket cart along with toothpaste and paper towels.
In many households, they still are.
But with apothecary-style packaging, natural ingredients and minimalist brand names, high-priced soap has caught on with many members of the same generation associated with avocado toast and a certain shade of pink.
Many facets of one’s life can be artfully framed and filtered for hearts and comments. How many make photogenic lather and also smell nice?
“I think I might have been influenced by another influencer,” said Summer Miller, a 23-year-old freelance stylist who swears by hand soaps from brands like Aesop and Byredo.
“I’ll do anything to have good packaging for the way that it looks on my shelf. It makes me so happy and makes my bathroom look fancier.”
Alexander Atkins, a 29-year-old social media specialist and menswear blogger, is also a fan of Aesop, as well as Le Labo.
“It appeals to people like me, in terms of it photographing very nicely,” he said. “I think that my generation seems to be more aesthetically driven.”
A PRETTY PACKAGE
Expensive hotels were the first to use soaps as a form of brand enhancement. Now restaurants and boutique fitness studios are following.
The Gramercy Park Hotel in New York has been using amenities from Aesop, based in Australia, since 2014. Morgans Hotel went local with Malin & Goetz. Around the world, the Ace Hotel chain stocks products from Rudy’s Barbershop, a nod to the company’s Northwestern roots. Included in the price of SoulCycle’s US$36 (RM145) stationary-cycling class is a rinse-off with Le Labo, a 12-year-old perfume company in New York that started producing soap last autumn.
The boutique workout company Barry’s Bootcamp stocks Oribe, the luxurious line of the celebrity hairstylist. Equinox, which helped take gyms upscale, has stocked Kiehl’s soaps in its locations since 2009.
When the Italian fashion brand Prada and the high-end online retailer Mr Porter hosted an event at Gutter Bar, a grungy bowling alley and dive bar in the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn, to celebrate a springtime fashion collection, no detail was overlooked and its organisers put Byredo in the bathroom, resulting in some enthusiastic tweets.
But how much will it set you back to get this stuff in your own bathroom?
Well, Byredo Suede Hand Wash sells for US$65, Aesop Reverence Aromatique Hand Wash sells for US$39, and Le Labo Hinoki Hand Soap sells for US$38.
Even boutique bar soap isn’t cheap: Saturdays NYC Moisturising Bar Soap, made by a menswear label, is US$20 and Binu Binu Shaman Black Charcoal Soap is US$18 (yes, charcoal — that which used to smudge chimney sweeps).
The leading players tout their substance. “While pretty stores and pretty packaging are important to us, it would be nothing without having a quality product inside,” said Andrew Goetz, a founder of Malin & Goetz.
“If you pump out one of our hand washes, you’ll notice it’s really viscous and thick, and it’s not going to run through your fingers.”
WASHING WITH DIRT
An idea of industrial squeaky clean in America — remember when everyone had a little bottle of Purell? — has long done battle with one of gently cooperating with nature.
Nowadays it’s the nature-inclined faction that seems to be winning, with handmade, rough-hewed bars filling shops from Etsy to Sephora.
Aveda, the natural grooming company founded in 1978, helped usher in the concept that high-quality shampoo and soap was worth paying a premium for.
Aesop, founded in 1987, added streamlined design.
The increase of niche brands continued into the 1990s, including companies marketing sensitive-skin soaps and fragrancefree soaps.
Yet another wave of these premium beauty, skin care and soap brands popped up in the mid-aughts, including Sachajuan, in Stockholm, and Grown Alchemist, from Melbourne, Australia.
The Erno Laszlo “Sea Mud” black bar, given a shout-out in Annie Hall, has been joined by entrants from Herbivore and Korres.
Despite its reputation as the messier, inferior application, the bar soap is resurgent. In a Softsoap television commercial from 1982, bars of soap from Camay, Ivory, Dial and Dove are stacked upon a royal blue sink counter and shown eroding alongside a pristine bottle of liquid Softsoap. The voice-over then states: “Soap without the soapy mess.”
But a report by Mintel, a market research firm, found that more than 60 per cent of consumers said they might consider buying “premium” varieties of bar soap, even though more than half of consumers say bar soap is inconvenient.
In 2018, mess and inconvenience, as long as it seems intentional, can feel more like a feature - not a bug.
The Brooklyn-based company Joya offers a bar soap that comes with its own beautifully designed tray, and Salt & Stone, a company based in a village in British Columbia, sells salt bars in distinct pyramid shapes.
Even the bar soap from Saturdays NYC comes embellished with the logo, the same one that adorns the brand’s widely coveted graphic T-shirts.
“I’m happy to use an unscented Dove soap and buy it for US$1.50,” said Frederick Bouchardy, the founder of Joya.
“But I also want these, and I’m not ashamed of it. These are so cool and beautiful - you just want to touch them, smell them and have them.”
NYT