Spreading like a mosaic across my desk are bars of soap. For the last few days, that mosaic—which is fighting for space with a copy of Butt magazine (thanks, Bottega Veneta), a precariously balanced pile of books (though the heaviest and the newest, Alexandra Carl’s very good Collecting Fashion, shouldn’t be sitting atop the far smaller Joseph Altuzarra–gifted copy of Rosemary’s Baby), and a 2019 Prada diary that I lost (now repurposed as a notebook, full of illegibly scrawled to-do lists)—gets a little bigger. That’s because every day my colleague Margaux Anbouba, Vogue’s senior beauty and wellness editor, has arrived with more, and more and yet more soaps—from Santa Maria Novella’s sapone latte in Rosa (I love—like, really love—anything rose scented) to Aesop’s exfoliating Polish Bar Soap and Loewe’s iconic and ironic Tomato Leaves soap-on-a-rope.
Why all this bountitude? It’s all because one day I happened to mention to Margaux and her fellow beauty editor Arden Fanning Andrews that I had all but forsaken liquid soap for the bar. (I still always, always make an exception for Diptyque’s Softening Hand Wash.) Write about it, they said. So here I am, barhopping—testing out whatever Margaux- and Arden-selected bars landed on my desk. (Of course, they knew stuff I didn’t: From Margaux, that soap’s roots lie in Aleppo in Syria; from Arden, that soap is really the origin of that current holy grail of beauty, the waterless product.)
As it turns out, I am not alone in my love of solid soap, especially around the Vogue offices. Leah Faye Cooper, our digital style director, is a self-confessed bar-soap enthusiast—a devotee of Dove’s Beauty Bar who also swears that soap nirvana can be found at the Lisbon airport. (I mean, who hasn’t fallen for those Portuguese Claus Porto soaps?) And Suzie Lechtenberg, who produces our podcast The Run-Through, resorted to buying a soap dish solely because her French boyfriend only uses bar soap in the bath or shower, though she herself is less convinced. “The soap always leaves a ring around the tub,” she confided.
A friend, stylist Daniel Edley, was in the office the other day for a meeting and came by to say hello. He picked one bar out of the soap mosaic, held it to his nose, and told me how his grandmother used to put soap into her socks to scent her lingerie. (Apologies for trotting out, for the gazillionth time, that old Proustian notion of madeleines evoking the past, but let’s just say that no one would ever treasure the memory of a beloved relative putting a soap pump dispenser inside their socks. I mean: No.) Daniel also mentioned that when he lived in Paris, he’d bring soaps back for his grandmother from Monoprix, specifically buying its house brand, Bio (translation: “organic”) A La Lavande face and body—visage et corps—soap, which underscores one of my rules (oh, just wait: I have plenty) about bar soaps: Namely, that the best doesn’t need to cost a fortune.
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A day or so later, at dinner one night with designer Victor Glemaud at Sant Ambroeus in the West Village, I arrived with an aura of scent around me—like Pigpen, but in reverse—because I was carrying about 10 bars in my bag. When Victor asked about this, I mentioned that I was trying them out for a story and had all but stopped using liquid in favor of solid soap, a kind of throwback to an earlier life in the ’80s—and, yeah, okay, the ’70s, when I was a kid—when bar soap was all I used. “Didn’t we all?” he asked rhetorically—and of course, he’s right.
There was a BL—Before Liquid—era, and in the UK, where I grew up, what was on offer was everything from the evocatively named carbolic—it could slough off your epidermis via its scent alone—to the Camay brand which, perfume- and image-wise, was akin to washing yourself with a Harlequin romance novel. At home, we used everything from Palmolive and Simple soap—my family had a brief flirtation with the unscented, all-natural, back-to-the-earth vibe of the era—to my favorite, Pears, which was like a piece of amber in soap form.
Pears was also my granny’s favorite—clearly, grandmothers are a big part of the soap story—as well as the soap that ultimately brought me, years later, back to the bar. It wasn’t just that I had tired of throwing out so many plastic soap containers. During the height of the pandemic, when we were all furiously washing our hands every minute because of the coronavirus, I started using it again, and I soon found that the rhythmic act of turning the bar over and over in your hands under hot water for 30 seconds didn’t just feel cleansing and hygienic: It was also strangely comforting—handwashing loaded with nostalgia, connecting me to a much earlier life back in the UK, something I found especially soothing in a moment when, because of a tricky visa situation, I wasn’t able to travel back and forth. At that moment, bar soap meant home.
Leaving the pump-pump of liquid behind, though, somehow led me to develop a whole ecosystem of rules about how you use bar soap. A few starters: I still leave liquid by the washbasin in case any of my guests are bar-phobic. The same bar doesn’t get used in the shower and in the sink—and some options just seem better, scent- and size-wise, for the kitchen: That’s where I have the Pink Fruit Organic Bar Soap by Flamingo Estate, deliciously scented with blood orange, rose clay, and Kyoto red carrot and redolent of those Provençal soaps that are marginally smaller than a house brick. As lifting it involves some effort, it sits in a soap dish the size of a dinner plate and requires only that I gently rub my fingers over the top of it before I start lathering up.
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But back to the bathroom: The soap by the bath is lathered in the hand, with the suds applied directly to the skin. It doesn’t go anywhere else—especially if you’re not the only one using it. (In my mind, there are lots of reasons for that, but maybe the strongest is, and not to give the ick, but…hair.) Why this rule? Much as I liked the scent and hand feel of the Aesop soap, it didn’t lather much: It could only really be effective if it went into direct contact with your body. Evolvetogether’s exfoliating bar (in Havana) lathered much better. I’m also not a believer in the idea that the same bar can do face and body. (Opinions may vary, of course, but I never use soap anywhere near my visage.) And last but not least: Bar soap needs maintenance. You’ve got to keep the dish as clean and as dry as you can—otherwise you end up with soap melting away, and not in a good way.
From my entire gorgeous mosaic, what were the favorites—what made it home from the office? Obviously, it involved a sniff test: fresh, floral, or botanical, go; anything too musky, astringent, or heavy, no. I always want soap to smell, well…soapy, if you know what I mean. And the scent is crucial because, as with all things in life—potato chips, holiday gifts, dating—you can’t always tell by the packaging. (Though sometimes you can: The box containing Diptyque’s Eau Rose was as heavenly as what was inside.) For the shower, I’d happily use Papatui’s Enriching Bar Soap in Sandalwood Suede, (I also loved that—bizarrely—Dwayne Johnson founded the brand.) But the one that stole my heart, mind, and nose was Sisley’s Eau de Campagne, which has this basil-y, herbal-y, grassy fragrance that led so many of my colleagues to ask me, as they walked by my office: “What smells so good?” Then, the answer was the soap. But before long, hopefully, it will be me.