Subtle Art Send It: Str8 Shave Saturday Scent Breakdown
Hey, welcome back to the channel, my Marvelous Misfits of Wet Shaving. Hope you’ve had a great week. If you’re new here, welcome. If you’ve been sticking around watching this old guy scrape metal on his face for a while, great to have you back.
This Str8 Shave Saturday is brought to you by Subtle Art Soap Co. and their new release, Send It.
Joe’s Mountain Bike Series
Joe dropped Send It on June 23rd. Subtle Art now has two soaps in the mountain biking inspired lineup: Whispering Woods and Send It. Whispering Woods skews more sophisticated, more cologne-like. Send It goes a completely different direction.
This one is wild. Complex. It dances between the crisp elements of traditional fougères and the dirty, lived-in depths of an animalic chypre. It’s a fragrance with teeth. Not safe. Not mass market. Not your shower gel kind of scent. Joe is very passionate about mountain biking, and he built a scent that captures both the clean outdoor environment and the gritty physical reality of actually riding trails. The inspiration is real and you can smell it.
The soap is in Joe’s V4B base, short for Vegan Four Butter. Four butters: kokum, mango, shea, and shorea. I’ve been running the V4B through its paces since Joe rolled it out, and it is absolutely fantastic. Super slick, ultra creamy, yogurt-like lather. That’s exactly how Joe describes it, and he’s not wrong.
The Hardware
Today I’m going with my Ralf Aust 5/8 with some custom scales. My good friend Josh, the Cutthroat Goat, put a Jnat edge on this for me. If you haven’t checked out his channel, please do. He tells it how it is. Doesn’t hold back. And he puts a phenomenal edge on a razor.
For the brush, I’m going with my Moon Soaps brush loaded with the AP Shave Co. G5C knot. Green and wood on a green, woody soap. Matchy-matchy. The G5C is one of my favorite knots, right next to the Pure Bliss, also from AP Shave Co. One note on the brush: I think I seated this knot a little too deep when I set it up. The loft isn’t quite there and it doesn’t splay how I want. Good news, I set it in silicone, so it’s not hard to pull out and reset with some spacers. A project for another day.
The Scent: Breaking Down All Ten Notes
Ten notes in Send It, and every single one is doing something. Here’s what each of them is actually about.
Green Accord and Rosemary
These two are the opening. A green accord is a perfumer’s blend. Think of it like a chord in music: multiple notes mixed into one, designed to smell like snap stems, crushed leaves, and morning dew. Sharp, watery, slightly bitter freshness that cuts right through the heavier base notes we’ll get to in a minute.
Then rosemary comes in. Rosemary is a bracing, camphor-like aromatic herb. It brings a piney, slightly cool, slightly minty quality that gives the opening that vigorous wake-up energy. That camphoraceous character you get off the tub? That’s the rosemary doing its job.
Cumin: The Rebel
Cumin is the note that makes this soap what it is. In perfumery, cumin brings a distinct spice that leans heavily animalic, often mimicking the scent of warm skin or faint, clean sweat. That’s intentional here. This is a mountain biking soap. Joe built in that little bit of salty sweatiness, but it’s clean sweat. Think being sweaty at the ocean, not body funk. Cumin adds gritty, sensual realism to the blend. It prevents the green and rosemary from smelling like a household cleaner.
Jasmine
Jasmine is a white floral, and in a complex profile like this one it provides what perfumers call an indolic quality. Indole is an organic compound. At high concentration it smells pungent. Massively diluted, as it is in perfumery, it gives you the lush, heavy, intoxicating floral aroma of white flowers. Jasmine here brings a heavy, almost overripe sweetness that pairs beautifully with the animalic notes, the cumin and the musk.
Iris
Iris typically comes from orris root, and it’s one of the classic powdery notes in perfumery. Slightly woody, slightly rooty, with a violet-adjacent quality that’s hard to describe but easy to recognize once you know it. Sitting between the heavy jasmine and the brighter orange blossom, iris provides a dry, earthy powder that keeps the heart from swinging too far in either direction. It’s a quiet note, but pull it out and you’d notice.
Orange Blossom
You’d think orange blossom would smell like citrus. It doesn’t. It’s another white floral. Unlike the heavy jasmine, orange blossom is bright and soapy, only slightly citrusy. It acts as the clean counterbalance to the dirtier, more animalic notes in the mid-section. That clean, soapy feeling in Send It? Orange blossom.
Royal Hawaiian Sandalwood
This is specifically Santalum paniculatum, a species of sandalwood known for being exceptionally creamy, buttery, and smooth. No harsh, cedar-like sawdust edge like you get from some synthetic wood alternatives. Instead it acts as a luxurious, sweet anchor in the base. Royal Hawaiian sandalwood is one of my personal favorites for a base note in this kind of profile.
Dark Patchouli
Dark patchouli is not the bright, minty patchouli from the 1960s. It’s been aged and distilled to bring out its dense, chocolaty, damp earth characteristics. It roots the whole fragrance in a soily, grounded vibe. Combined with the oakmoss, this is where Send It gets its vintage masculine depth.
Oakmoss
Oakmoss is the quintessential backbone of classic chypres and barbershop fougères. Inky bitter lichen and dark forest floors. Raspy, dry, distinctively vintage masculine edge. Oakmoss is one of my favorites, full stop. If you love vetiver, if you love oud, if anything earthy and complex is your lane, you know oakmoss.
Musk
Musk is the fixative: the glue that holds all of this together. Modern musk emulates the warm, fleshy, skin-like aura of natural animalic musk. It extends the longevity of the lighter notes and leaves a subtle warmth long after the shave.
Joe built something that genuinely works across two fragrance families. Fougère up top, animalic chypre in the heart and base. Unusual combination. It works.
Off the Tub: Tennessee Whiskey Proof Rating
On my Tennessee Whiskey Proof scale, zero proof is the worst and 100 proof is the best. I give Send It a solid 50 proof off the tub. Maybe 55. Joe typically lightly scents his soaps, and this one is slightly more prominent than his usual output. That’s actually a good thing in a shave soap. You want it there.
The Shave
Josh put a Jnat edge on the Ralf Aust and this thing glides. Light touch, find the angle, let the razor do the work. The V4B base loaded up fast and face painted beautifully. The lather has exactly the body you want: creamy, slick, that yogurt-like consistency the base is known for.
There’s also a Send It Aftershave Splash in the lineup. Same scent profile. I showed it in the video. The matchy-matchy setup ties the whole routine together.
Thanks for hanging out for this Str8 Shave Saturday. Send It is a limited release. If this profile sounds like your kind of thing, you know what to do. Happy shaving, Misfits.
