Pacha Soap Co. – Super Shrooms Bar Soap

“This Island Earth”

I usually buy Pacha soap at the store, no packaging. Minimal packaging is nice, but the only way to do better than “no packaging,” I guess, would be to travel back in time and somehow reverse the insane packaging trend that happened, at some point. If any soap could send you back in time, it would be this one—not that it did that to me—I stayed in the same timezone, but traveled somewhere. Anyway, you have to look at their website for ingredients. It's a good website. It says this particular soap features: “adaptogenic reishi and chaga mushrooms with activated charcoal powder.” If that means anything to you, great, explain it to me over coffee. I trust them, and I'll just take the easy route and say, “shrooms” in a stoner voice.

Someone at that Pacha company has it going on with the fragrances, or else I've just gotten lucky (haven't tried them all, of course!), but this is another one that almost freaks me out, I like it so much. I can't say it smells like mushrooms, though maybe it does, but there's a lot of different mushrooms. It definitely has a really compelling earthy fragrance—that's my best attempt to describe it. It's that kind of “take your breath away” earthiness and intensity. Just about my favorite in quite a while. The color, too, is quite beautiful—it looks like an abstract desert painting, or layers of earth. Four shades of brown, one on top of the other—from dark brown to tan. Or maybe dessert as much as desert. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say I'd eat this soap, but I'd wear it, travel with it, exhibit it, get lost in it—I'll stop now before I start to sound weird.

Soap Review No. 120