Soap
Is there, I ask you, a more perfect present than soap?
Everyone uses it, or at least, they should. It has moreover the swank value of being more environmentally friendly than gel or handwash, in their (mostly) plastic containers. It’s an ideal size and shape for wrapping, especially in a gift set, or, singly, for a Christmas stocking. It’s relatively cheap – and by that I mean, relative to something like scent, though the prices below vary markedly. And it’s more or less risk-free. If you buy a fragrance, you’re taking a punt on someone’s taste, but a nice soap is universally acceptable.
Indeed, if you know that someone is terrifically keen on a particular fragrance, they’ll be glad to add another dimension of it in a soap, for some of the most famous come as soap. And as every scent buff knows, if you put a lovely soap unwrapped in your sock drawer, it’ll make everything in it fragrant. As for shaving soap, it’s longer lasting than creams and foams, and according to grooming specialists Trufitt and Hill, it produces “thicker and more luxurious lather, once the correct lathering technique is mastered”. One for traditionalists.
But whatever the soap, there are some fabulously packaged versions out there – you may as well make your presents lovely to the eye as well as to the hand and nose.
LOEWE Perfumes Tomato Leaves Large Soap Bar
This is famous for a reason: there’s the heady green scent of tomato leaves, a statement red colour, and a big, brick shape in a gorgeous tomatoey box. There’s shea butter in there too. This is soap on a rope with fabulousness. (£52, Perfumesloewe.com)
Bronnley, Lemon Soap
If I’m allowed to have favourites, this is mine: Bronnley, an English make of triple milled soaps which outperforms more expensive brands and is simply lovely. Perhaps the best known is the famous lemon soap, shaped like a lemon – indeed the first shaped soap ever – and available either in waxed paper or as three in a box, wooden or decorated. It’s over 100 years old, but it’s unchanged in design. There’s bergamot as well as lemon in the citrus scent. I went to the factory once and saw the triple milling, in which the soap is put through steel rollers three times, to remove air and moisture and make it harder and longer lasting. Bronnley’s is a class act. (£8.50 or £25 or a set of three, bronnley.co.uk)
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Truefitt & Hill: Highgrove Luxury Triple-Milled Soap
One for royal buffs, this, a collaboration with the royal estate, with a percentage of the revenue going to the King’s Foundation and a picture of Highgrove on the box. The scent itself is designed to conjure up the scents of the garden – notes of cedar, cypress and lavender with a whiff of vetiver. Whatever, it’s very good. Triple milled, so longer lasting than most. The scent also comes as a shaving soap – the company is famous for its shaving products – in an elegant wooden box, though I would also consider the Apsley and the Mayfair shaving soaps for a well-groomed male. (£23 or £55 for a box of three, truefittandhill.co.uk)
Santa Maria Novella Melograno soap set
There is nothing to beat Santa Maria Novella soap as a present and I have yet to come across anyone who doesn’t warm to its pomegranate scent, melograno. The house itself comes from an old Dominican pharmacy in Florence; the friars no longer make the products but it still has the heritage and the integrity of the natural ingredients. The packaging is fabulous, and there’s a huge range of soaps, from sulphur to cologne. And if you’re spoiling someone, I’d throw in the lovely bath salts too. A lovely gift if you’re visiting someone. ( £42 or for individual bath soap, £18, uk.smnovella.com)
Dr Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap
There’s something about Dr Bronner’s soaps that makes me smile, and I’m sure it’s the cheerfully philanthropic message on the package – “In all we do, let us be fair and loving to Spaceship Earth, for we’re All-One or None! The company was founded in California in 1948 and it bears out its founder’s message in its current business philosophy; this really is a fair-trade product. But it is also a very good soap in a variety of scents. Peppermint is refreshing and almond universally appealing. (£6.50, drbronner.co.uk)
Ortigia, Bergamotto Tiny soap in tin,
For a company that was only founded in 2006 by Sue Townsend – formerly of that excellent company, Crabtree and Evelyn – Ortigia feels like it’s been around for ever. It’s based in Italy and the inspiration is Sicily. The scents are lovely, made by Lorenzo Villoresi, and the products are based on natural ingredients: olive oil, vegetable glycerine, and organic colours. But it’s the packaging which is so fabulous, designed by Sue Townsend, and based on historic Sicilian motifs, one favourite being the leopards on the Ambra Nera. The bergamotto, like the others, has a palm tree stamped on the soap and comes at 25g in an inviting little tin, but consider too the Jungle set of six olive oil soaps for £35, if you can’t make your mind up. (£9, ortigiasicilia.com)
Floris: no 89 soap, or as one of the Soaps for Him
You know where the Royals buy their fragrance, don’t you? It’s just up the road from Buckingham Palace, in Floris in Jermyn Street. The historic range includes some very fine soap and it is just the thing for a discerning person’s stocking. No. 89 is a very classy cologne scent, with orange and bergamot blended with lavender and neroli. It’s usually billed for men, but I say it’s good for both sexes, i.e. me. The set For Him - which also includes citrussy Cefiro and woody Elite - covers pretty well every taste. There’s also a selection For Her. (£60, florislondon.com)
Chanel no. 5 The Bath Soap
If you are a Chanel no. 5 person, look no further: this is what you need to take the fragrance to another layer. It has the same notes of rose and jasmine as the scent, and it lathers up beautifully. What could be nicer to find in your stocking? (£32, chanel.com)
