La Florentina – Limone Lavanda

“Emonslay Avenderlay”

This is another of those huge, white, elegant looking fancy soaps—and I've said this before, but it's the best way to describe it—it's one you would imagine your grandma or aunt putting in the downstairs “half bathroom,” for the imposing look and nice fragrance—almost assuming that no one's even going to use it. At 10.5 ounces, you have to be in pretty good shape just to pick it up. And the fresh, unused bar is so elegantly sculpted, with with the name and ornate seal, and lots of curlicues and design—on back, too—you might feel guilty getting it wet, opting instead to use the disposable hand pump soap on the other side of the sink in the half-bath. Of course, me, I immediately took it into the bathtub and felt like a rich person with money to burn. It wasn't expensive, though, because I bought it at TJ Maxx, and the ingredient list, if you're allergic to strange, unknowable and possibly heinous chemicals, might keep you up worrying about rashes. I get more skin irritation into fall and winter because of the dryness, so it's always hard for me to know, but I kind of suspected this one—but since it's impossible to nail down what gives you skin itchiness, I can't really accuse it. It does have some good stuff in there, olive oil, shea butter, glycerin, and it's a nice feel and lather. The fragrance, though, is the best part.

This soap comes in a box that may have cost more than the soap to produce. It's so big and substantial, you might save it for other use, like burying a small pet. It's got multi-colored printing, a drawing of some lemons and some lavender. There's a fancy company logo and other printing in metallic silver. It's from Italy, and it says “Limone Lavanda” on the front, which I assume is Italian, then on one side of the box it says “Citron Lavande,” is that French? And somewhere else: “Zitrone Lavendel”—I don't know what that is, but I'm going to use that as a character name sometime! And then on the other side, Lemon Lavender, which kind of spells it out in plain English. The first thing you smell is the lemon, and it's kind of intoxicating. I wouldn't want to use a citrus soap every day, but I wouldn't mind always having one around. But then you smell the lavender underneath the lemon, and it's really pretty magical. I love lavender, but it's the most common of all soap fragrances, at least I feel like I see it more than anything else, so I've been kind of avoiding it lately, just for variety's sake. But this combination of lavender with citrus, and in particular bold lemon, it really works. They kind of hit a home run, here, with the fragrance. This is like Reese's Peanut Butter Cup level divine combination alchemy.

Soap Review No. 81