Choosing Your First Soap or Cream
Soap vs. cream, tallow vs. vegan, drugstore vs. artisan — and three specific starter products that won't disappoint.
The five-second answer
Buy Stirling Soap Co in any scent. ~$13. Done. Read the rest if you want to know why.
Soap vs. cream
Shave soap is a hard or soft puck in a tub. You load it with a damp brush — swirl on the puck for 30-45 seconds — then build the lather on your face or in a bowl.
Shave cream is a soft paste. You scoop a pea-sized amount with a finger, drop it in your bowl or on your wet brush, and lather. Easier for beginners; usually a touch less luxurious in feel.
Both work. Soaps last longer (a $13 puck = 50-100 shaves) and have more variety on the artisan side. Creams build lather faster and are more forgiving on water ratio.
Tallow vs. vegan
Tallow-based soaps use rendered beef fat as the primary lubricant. They feel slick, dense, and “cushion” the razor in a way that many shavers find irreplaceable. The classic feel.
Vegan soaps use plant-derived fats — coconut oil, shea butter, kokum butter, castor oil — to hit the same performance. Modern vegan formulations (post-2018 or so) are excellent. If you keep kosher, are vegan, or just prefer it, you don’t lose anything meaningful.
For starters: don’t agonize. Both work.
Drugstore vs. artisan
Drugstore ($3-7): Williams Mug Soap, Van Der Hagen, Arko, Proraso. They’re cheap, accessible, and… fine. Williams is famous for being terrible — skip it. Van Der Hagen and Proraso are workhorses; artisan soaps are softer, denser, and smell incomparably better.
Artisan ($13-30): Stirling, Barrister & Mann, Master Soap Creations, Strike Gold, Hendrix Classics, Wholly Kaw, Phoenix Artisan Accoutrements, Adopted Acres, Van Yulay. This is most of the wet shaving world. The performance jump from drugstore to good artisan is the largest single upgrade in your kit.
Three starter recommendations
Stirling Soap Co — any scent except their menthol-heavy ones at first ($13 USD). Stirling Campania at TWSS is a safe starter.. Tallow base, easy to lather, forgiving on water ratio, a hundred scents to choose from. The de facto “first artisan soap” for thousands of shavers.
Proraso Green (eucalyptus + menthol) ($7-10 USD). The classic Italian barbershop tube. Cooling, easy to lather, and probably available at your local CVS. Excellent insurance buy if your artisan soap doesn’t arrive on time.
Barrister & Mann “Reserve Lavender” or “Seville” ($25 USD). B&M at TWSS. Step up from Stirling. Denser lather, longer post-shave skin feel. Worth saving for after you’ve used Stirling for a few weeks and know what you’re chasing.
Skip these
- Williams Mug Soap. Famously chalk-like. The internet’s punching bag for a reason.
- Anything in an aerosol can. That’s not soap; it’s foam. The whole point of wet shaving is leaving the can behind.
- “Glycerin shave bars” marketed as both bath soap and shave soap. They lather but they don’t cushion. The blade drags.
Stirling, B&M, MSC, HC&C, and every other artisan we’ve covered are stocked at The Wet Shaving Store →