Thread: If You Absolutely Could Not Buy MCD Or Castle Forbes

With the exception of a very, very small few, most artisan soaps are made from low quality cheap bulk order scents and soap bases, don't have great quality control, and are not far off or on par with basically the home candle makers, while adding cool, grungy sounding names with fancy pictures. The vast majority of artisan soaps I've tried have been utterly terrible, and most have been binned after one use.

if you couldn't get MDC or CF, what makes you think you can get the other soaps from across the ocean? Tc

Not fussed one bit if I could not get MdC or CF. I'm to the point of not ordering anymore of those two. I could easily live with locally available Maca Root or Proraso or order in Tabac

Bob

Yea, there are so many top tier soaps out there I agree the list is very long.

Personally my go to soaps there days are the Meisner lineup so if the two mentioned were unavailable it wouldn't bother me at all.

Only quality soaps I've tried are from Stirling Soaps and recently some samples from Gentlemen's Quarter. I've enjoyed both.

I'd go with Baume.be, Meißner Tremonia, Green Mountain Soap, Calani Seifenmanufaktur, or Esbjerg shaving cream.

Best regards,

Pieter

I would be happy to know I could use MDC for the rest of my life!

Tom would always find a way to trade for what he really wants, even if it takes two or three trades.

1. Soaps: Czech & Speake/vintage AOS soaps/Valobra (all made by Valobra), Tabac, Klar

2. Creams: Penhaligon's, Acqua Di Parma, Santa Maria Novella, Alvarez Gomez, Antica Barbieria Cola, XPEC

While I use and enjoy both MdC and CF, in my opinion they are really good products, but not as great as some of the others in my den.

BTW, straight razor shaving gave me a whole new appreciation of Tabac, and I agree 100% on that.

The others? The good Italians: Nuàvia, XPEC, SV, SMN, AdP-I could shave with any one of them for the rest of my life and be very happy.

There are also artisan soaps that are very, very good tallow-based soaps, specifically the Declaration Grooming soaps, Grooming Dept (phenomenal, both tallow and non-tallow), Barrister's Reserve, and the new goat's milk formulation from Ariana & Evans.

For me, any one of the soaps that I've listed above outperform both Castle Forbes and Martin de Candre.

We are spoiled, because if a genie made every soap and cream but MdC and CF disappear, I'd be a happy shaver.

But we live in such unbelievably great times for wet shaving that we have such amazing choices in soaps and creams!