Thread: Van der hagan soap

It's what I started on several months back when I got into straight razor shaving and I thought it was pretty good.
Then I bought a tube of C.O. Bigelow (rebranded Proraso) and I threw the Van Der Hagen away.

I just picked up a puck of their scented luxury soap. I havent used it yet, but the smell it actually very nice. Im looking forward to trying it out.

I'm also a fan of Bigelow, I have found when I first started with Bigelow it dried out quickly..but I added a lot more water and found it to work extremely well.. but for the money I just love the vdh soap.. for the price I feel it just can't b beat.. I haven't tried Williams yet but I hear some good some bad about the difficulty of its use from what I gather it takes a huge amount of water to get it to lather..

It is true about the Williams, but if you can lather it, you can lather anything IMO.
It is what I learned on, it makes for a good shave, long lasting lather and clean scent.
I keep a few pucks around, at one of the local groceries it is a $1 a puck so you can't go wrong.

I agree that it is the best value around and is also the only shaving soap that we can get locally, other than the Bigelow I mentioned but that is only at Bath & Body works stores at the malls. I did find that the Van Der Hagen dried fast on my face but with the addition of glycerine as was suggested it would probably be a lot better. At the moment I only use the Bigelows and MWF and love them both. Think I will try combining them.

I've tried the VdH Luxury soap, and in my opinion it's slightly better than the Deluxe, but not much better. For the difference in price I'm not going to replace it when it's gone. (I'm on my 4th puck of the Deluxe)

About the "Luxury" kit in the orange box - It is available with a badger brush, and with an identical looking boar brush, both in identical looking boxes. I got mine at Target about a year ago and it came with the boar one. It's a nicer brush than the Deluxe one, but if you want badger, make sure to read the box!

I also just picked up that Luxury kit from Target as well. The apothecary bowl that comes with the kit is nice as well. The stand seems well made and like it would last for quite a while. The brush that came with mine is also a boars hair brush. Im not a huge fan of boars hair now that I've used badger, so it will probably just collect dust.

Brands like VDH and Williams are soaps in the category of "gets the job done". Most of us used them when we first started out and to us then we looked in amazement at posts from guys who bought high ends soaps. That was until we tried the better soaps and if you do you will find a whole new world open up to you.

I hear ya.. I have some Mwf. Love it also what's considered high end?

I filled up my bathroom sink with some hot water and left my vdh soap in the bowl it came in, got out of the shower looked in bowl soap melted all gone lol.. Gotta get some more picked up some Williams today just to try.. It's not price with me I just wanna b well rounded...