Best Bar Soaps for Soft, Smooth Skin

 

The simple bar soap is experiencing its greatest moment in thousands of years. Best Goods GQ tests all small batches and top brands to find the bricks that are the most skin-friendly.

The best bar soaps smell good, are clean, and will take you back to simpler times, depending on your age, maybe around high school, before the lowly bar was washed away by the bath soap. Remember when we hoarded soap and hand soap because bar soaps in the past were created to clean skin, but not nourish? The liquid alternative combines disinfecting agents with ingredients that are very nourishing for the skin. And that bar from the drugstore is used to dry out your skin like no other. No longer. Bar soap is making a comeback. They still clean your skin, but are now infused with oils, butter, and lotions to replace lost moisture and skin condition.

If stored in well-ventilated conditions (and not in a small pool of water), bar soap can last a month or more. The best of them can also work as a facial cleanser. And let's face it: it's the original, the standard, the basic. It doesn't spill. Pack easily. They don't count as liquids on the TSA (travel tip!) And they're easier to distribute than clunky liquid products and therefore much harder to sell.

But like the best body soaps, the best bar soaps act as aromatherapy and leave the skin feeling hydrated instead of petrifying. They last a long time and get comments from your guests, such as "Hey, what brand of soap do you use?" That's not a strange, or uncommon, question when you choose a bar of soap that is as close to, say, a signature scent as possible. Here are five of our current favorites, plus three other bar soaps we love, just in case.