So, I was fortunate enough to score a shave set in a raffle- which included a Vie Long Cachurro horse hair brush, and a puck of the unscented Elvado shave soap. Elvado is a newer entry to the world of traditional lathering soaps, and they are from Canada. Their soap is listed as "Bio-Pure Vegan," with African Shea Butter. The packaging also says that it "yields over 180 superb shaves." It does have a very nice ingredient list- which I've listed below: Ingredients: Cocos Nucifera (Coconut Oil), Elaesis Guineensis (Palm Oil) , Cathamus Tintorius (Safflower Oil), Glycerine (Kosher of vegetable origin), Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter), Purified Water, Fragrance (Parfum 100% Natural), Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Avena Sativa (Oat Protein), Titanium Dioxide (Mineral Whitener) Now, on to the performance...I have to say, for a soap with quality ingredients- which is priced at $20 for a 4oz. puck, I expected it to perform very well. Unfortunately, I found the lather to be lackluster in almost every respect. I utilized various lathering techniques- Dry method, Marco method, soaking the puck, bowl, face, you name it...and I never got a nice dense lather from it. I also used a variety of brushes to see if that would make a difference (badger, boar, horse, synthetic). No matter how I lathered, the air bubbles stayed somewhat large, and it dissipated on my face rather quickly. The soap provides adequate slickness and protection; but I constantly had to reapply lather during my passes. Elvado also released a video showing how the soap lathers. Even in their video, it is apparent that the lather is meant to stay on the fluffy side- which for me is a no-go. Here is a link to the video: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=242041702643180 At this point, I wouldn't feel right selling or even giving this away to someone else- as the performance just isn't on par with what the vast majority of wet shavers consider to be ideal. Can you shave with it? Of course. Are there a myriad of other options that perform much better-while costing less? Absolutely. Because of this, I took the most ethical action I could, and disposed of the soap- save for the container. The container is very nice, and will be used to house my new puck of Stirling soap- which should arrive very shortly. The best thing about this shave set is that I got a very nice Vie Long brush- which I will gladly use! My recommendation, I would not go out and purchase this soap. For all of the reasons I mentioned earlier, it's just not worth it. If you are given a puck for some reason- try it out. You may like it (ya know, YMMV and all). But as someone who has used a variety of quality soaps, Elvado does not live up to my expectations of what a quality soap should be.
Thanks! I also want to note that Elvado offers other shaving products too (balms, cleansers, etc...). And for all I know, those could be fantastic products. I don't want to come off as bashing the company in any way. I love that there is another company offering traditional shaving products. My hope is that they would continue to test and improve their soap, so that one day they would have a killer product!
To me, the Elvado Almond soap has the best scent of any almond scented soap/cream (take a deep breath, Cella lovers ). It is robust and smells fantastic and the scent carries over to the lather. However, I agree that the lather dissipates very quickly. I still sometimes use the soap, I just load the brush between passes and it works well for me. I like the scent too much to get rid of it. But the performance does not match up to the best artisan soaps.
I've said this countless times - expensive doesn't necessarily mean top-quality. Look how cheap Arko is, for example.
