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Disclosure Statement:

Eleven Shaving provided a sample of the soap for review.

Write-up:

A few weeks ago I thought of how much I enjoyed using Eleven’s soap base during the Lather Games back in June. I reached out to Eleven to ask some questions about their products, and owner Paolo kindly offered to send me a sample of Barbershop (link to Eleven's site). This is his newest scent creation as well as the first soap to be featured in the new Julien base.

Paolo told me he had been working on a barbershop scent for some time now, and the scent went through many variations before arriving at this version. It has a fairly typical list of barbershop scent notes including bergamot, rosemary, oakmoss, patchouli, sandalwood, and powdery musk. This scent smells “classic” to me and is certainly a familiar scent from my youth, but it does not feel redundant or too similar to other artisan barbershop soaps that I have smelled in the past. The scent strength is medium off of my sample tub, and it’s definitely a winner for me.

The new Julien soap base looks to improve on what the original 11.0 base already started by improving slickness and post-shave performance. The only new ingredient to the soap base is kokum better, while the other differences only exist in ingredient ratios. Julien is a tallow-based soap and also includes nice ingredients like shea butter, mango butter, kokum better, silk, grapeseed oil, and apricot kernel oil. The ingredients list does not skimp on materials, but it doesn’t feel gratuitous either.

I had no issues working with this soap base during the week. I used a badger knot for a couple shaves, and a synthetic for a couple, including in today’s video. The Julien base is a soft croap, so it loads easily into a brush, and it didn’t seem to matter if I started with a dry or wet brush. This base stands out to me as having a puffier, higher structure lather compared to the usual artisan soaps I use (though not as much as what I remember of the 11.0 base), and it wasn’t lacking at all in terms of primary slickness, residual slickness, or post-shave feel. In a crowded artisan soap marketplace, Eleven’s new Julien base stands out to me as being incredibly easy to lather and work with, yet still performs at a high level where it is nearly impossible to find things to complain about. The Barbershop soap retails for $16 for 4 ounces of soap, which is not bad compared to other soaps these days.

As always, thank you all for reading my reviews and watching my videos. Happy Holidays!