Have We Reached Peak Soap?

When I started the traditional wet shaving journey I found the majority of the shaving soaps I tried to be pretty good and a few to be very good.  Over time with reformulations some of the soaps began to seperate themselves from the pack but overall they were mostly only "incrementally" better.  With some of the recent reformulations and developments a few of the soaps have dramatically distanced themselves from the pack.  The improvements have not been incremental but rather orders of magnitude better, in my opinion.  Sadly some of my old favourites just don't cut it anymore and I've found myself deciding that I won't be using those soaps in future because they are noticeably inferior now.  Even using moisturizing pre-shave (GD for me).  

Obviously I'm delighted that I have such excellent soap at my disposal but I'm also a bit sad that I can no longer justify using some of the soaps I cut my teeth (and my whiskers) on but, this is the way (Mando) New and better squeezes out the old and not as good.  Does anybody else feel this way?  Do you think that the current state of the very best soaps are as good as its possible to get?  Have we reached Peak Soap?

We have as far as the price points most shavers are willing to put out for a tub of soap.

I believe there will always be a new fat or butter or combination that gets a better shave but they may have increased costs for production.

Maybe penguin tallow is the end all but good luck getting that in quantity.

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I don’t think we’ve hit a peak as far as quality goes, but with all the new bases it’s hard to keep up, I think from a price point we are hitting a breaking point where most of us have had a revolution, I don’t need the latest and greatest is nice but I still get good shaves from the soaps I have and I have enough soap to last my lifetime and likely my sons. I’m really at the point that I’m done chasing the newest ones. I might be the minority though


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I too feel soap makers made SIGNIFICANT progress in recent years. But there is still room for improvement. I'd say some could make the leap by putting scents on the side for a while and focusing on perfecting the base. But then again, that is not a market driven approach so I doubt it will happen.

I don't know how much better lather quality itself can get, but things like post shave and ease of lathering can probably still improve quite a bit. The newest Grooming Dept bases are some of the easiest lathering soaps that I have used.

And again I’m the weirdo. (Gonna have to get used to this).  I have not found shaving soaps to have made my shaving better nor have I found scenting to have made great strides.  Hey, I can well respect the work the artisans have done but at the end of the day they don’t do my face any better than good old Tabac.  Additionally it seems that for this high-octane performance we lose stability.  By that I don’t mean soaps are going to spontaneously combust in storage, what I mean is we don’t get to learn a soap like we used to.  It seems we have driven artisans to ever-release the newest beta and to my face the new is no better performing than the old and on three occasions in my opinion the New was far inferior.  That’s ok.  I get it.  And I don’t doubt others are finding soap nirvana.  For me, The Fat, Tabac, and old Williams still hold a place in my rotation AND new soaps and bases will to.  It’s getting harder for me to get off my wallet though as I’m just not finding a performance reason to try something new.

Most of today's soaps and creams are of good quality. Only a few are exceptional. I have enough soaps and creams to last the rest of my life. I personally have reached "peak soap".

As an old man stuck in my ways, I think soaps reached their peak of quality with the vintage Floris, Penahaligon's, and C&E tallow-based soaps. Nothing else since has improved on them.

I will concur with Lipripper660 that Tabac curiously (in my opinion) continues to be excellent.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everything made before 2019 should be tossed and further to churchilllafemme 's comment about what he considers to be the high water mark - I have never tried those vintage soaps and may never know the nirvana that they clearly represent to him.  There are just some more recent products that have made me say "damn, that was a great shave" 

I would never say "never" to possible improvement, but I will say that I no longer hold my breath for anybody's next great gift to shavers.  I have especially come to disdain beta tester and groupie hype like the plague.  For me, no one vendor has consistently led the pack, and this sort of hype has on balance had no predictive value.  Mind you, I have no reason to doubt anyone's sincerity, but I do doubt that most of the players understand the concept of "non sampling error", by which I mean that even a large core group may not accurately predict or represent the experience of product users in general.

Mea culpa.  Perhaps I digress.  I agree with the OP in that for me personally, soaps have improved compared to where I personally was 10 years ago, and occasionally by leaps and bounds.  But in my mind, I have already rephrased the OP's question into "Is the quest worth the cost?"  FWIW my own answer is the answer of a conflicted man:  I still have some skin in the game, but much less than a year or two ago, and I definitely think twice before putting my money down.