Oscars Gifts to James Kyson 2015 from the shows "Heros" and "Hawaii Five - 0"

CHIC Confessions

Part One: Handmade Soap versus Factory Made Soap

Not all soaps are created equal. And to be honest, some parts of the skin care industry are just plain dirty. Pun intended.

The term “Soap” is actually so heavily regulated by the cosmetic industry that many companies can’t even call their detergent laden products “soap.” Instead, they’re stuck calling them “moisturizing bars” and “body bars.”

Trust us, Chic Soaps are the real deal: SOAP.

Let’s start with what makes up handmade soap versus factory made soap.

Real soap is made from a simple reaction between water, lye and fats/oils. This process is called “Saponification.” how fitting? Large batch handmade soaps don’t exist, because this process can only be done on a small scale!

Unlike the food industry, unless the cosmetic industry is calling their product “soap” it doesn’t need to tell its consumers exactly what the ingredients are. Here at Chic Soaps we never leave you in the dark.

Meanwhile, factory made soap is made by combining together chemicals (including petroloeum) in a slurry mixer at which point it is dried using a vacuum chamber and an atomiser. Sure it sounds cool, but that really can’t be good for you. And it isn’t. The Ingredients in a bar of factory soap are somewhat like this: “Sodium tallowate, sodium cocoyl isethionate, sodium cocoate, sodium laurel sulfate, water, sodium isethionate, stearic acid, coconut fatty acid, fragrance, titanium dioxide, sodium chloride, disodium phosphate, tetrasodium EDTA, trisodium etidronate, BHT, FD&C blue no. 1, D&C red no. 33.”

We can’t wait to tell you what beautiful ingredients our products are made from! For example, take a look at the ingredients in our Obsidian Soap: Palm Oil, Coconut Oil, Olive Oil, Shea Butter, Activated Charcoal. That’s it, that’s all folks.

Stay tuned for Part Two of this article to get the lowdown on some more differences between factory and handmade soap.

Irina Marchenkova, President, CHIC Luxury Soaps.

www.chicsoaps.com

The History of Handmade Soap

No one really knows where it came from… That said, the first ever handmade soap seems to have been found in clay cylinders around 2800 BCE in modern day Iraq. Originally (and often to this very day!) soap was made with a combination of animal fat and/or vegetable fat and ash, or an alkaline salt product. Archaeologists have found a soap recipe on a Mesopotamian clay tablet from 2200 BCE.

Interestingly enough, soap wasn’t even first used to get that squeaky clean just out of the shower feeling, but to do the after dinner wash up. To get that pesky bacon grease out of the pan, basically.

Soap making guilds started popping up as early as the 7th Century.

By the 8th century, there were soap factories in Italy and Spain that were capitalizing on their close proximity to olive groves. Olive oil became the primary ingredient to their soap.

During the height of the industrial revolution, Eugene-Michel Chevreul from England determined the perfect quantity of animal fat to be in soap. Thus began soap making on a commercial level, marking the end of homemade soap. People began buying soap from catalogs in stores.

And the rest is history…

Irina Marchenkova, President, CHIC Luxury Soaps.

www.chicsoaps.com