Name: Aleppo Soap with 30% Laurel Oil
Brand: Nour
Size: 200gr
Price: €6,50
From Nour’s website:
Aleppo Soap is considered the most natural and ancient soap: made of only pure vegetable fats (olive oil and laurel oil), it is delicate, precious and skin-friendly. 30% Laurel Oil is suitable for problematic skin types, dry skin with impurities, that suffers from itching.
What I liked:
- cleanses skin well
What I didn’t like:
- irritated my skin and made me break out
- bulky and difficult to use
- the scent
Aleppo soap is a very ancient type of soap that’s made in Syria. It is made mostly of olive oil and a variable amount of laurel oil (the one I have contains 30% of it). Lately, Italian beauty bloggers have been raving about this soap which made me curious to try it and so I was very pleased when I received it in a GlossyBox. So I decided to try it straight away only to find out that this is the worst soap I have ever used. It just don’t work for me at all.
Aleppo Soap is brown on the outside and green on the inside. It is quite big and bulky which makes it quite hard to handle. I tried to cut it down to manageable slices, but it just crumbled to pieces so I gave up and used it as it is. The scent isn’t nice either. It smells of laurel and it is quite strong, but fades away after 5 minutes, so you’ll just have to put up with it while you’re using it. I would have excused all this if it had performed well, but it actually caused havoc on my skin too!
Aleppo soap does a great job at cleansing skin and removing dirt, makeup and other impurities. However, after I use it my skin (which is oily on the t-zone and dry on the cheeks) feels very tight and my cheeks look red. Like that wasn’t enough, it made me break out quite bad. At first I thought the cause was hormonal as I always get a few pimples on my chin during that time of the month (oh the joys of being a woman!), but then I noticed I had some of my cheeks too.
So for the next month, I used the soap on and off and I noticed that, every time I used it, the pimples would appear, and every time I stopped, they would quickly disappear. I was really surprised at this because Aleppo soap is supposed to be very gentle and suitable for people with sensitive and problematic skin, and besides, soaps are on our skin for such a short time before being rinsed off that they really shouldn’t have the time to cause any problems. Yet this did. Why?
I believe the culprit is laurel oil. It is not an ingredient commonly found in skincare products and so I didn’t know much about it, but after some digging I discovered that it has some fragrant components that can cause irritations and allergies. And even though it stayed on my skin for a very short time, that was probably enough to cause an allergic reaction. So I just gave the soap to my bf’s mum, and went back to use products with sulfates such as Sodium Laureth Sulfate. They can be synthetic, but at least do their job without causing problems for my skin (and no, they don’t cause cancer either).
Of course just because laurel oil didn’t work for me, it doesn’t mean that it will cause problems for your skin too. I know lots of people who use Aleppo soap daily and have never experienced any redness or breakouts. So, if you are curious to try it, I recommend you buy one with a small concentration of laurel oil and see how that works for you. As for me, I have no choice but to give this soap a bad rating.
Ingredients:
*Olea europaea fruit oil, *laurus nobilis fruit oil, sodium hydroxide, aqua
*from biological agriculture
Available at: shop.nour.it
Summary
Although a lot of people swear by it, Nour Aleppo Soap with 30% Laurel Oil just doesn’t work for me. This soap, which is made mostly of olive oil and laurel oil, cleanses skin well but left mine feeling very tight and looking red. In addition, laurel oil can be very irritating and caused me to break out. Also, the soap is quite big and unpractical to use and the scent is quite strong.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh man, what a shame! A complete bummer that it bugged your skin so bad. And I had high hopes for it based on the picture. I like super natural looking soap.
Bummer!
(Also, I tagged you on my blog. You should check it out.)
Trisha´s last [type] ..Where the Magic Happens (And a Game of Blogger Tag)
Trisha, I had high hopes for it too as everyone I know raves about it and says how gentle it is on the skin, but I didn’t find it that delicate at all. It just caused havoc on my skin. Bummer indeed!
And thanks for the tag!
sometimes the raves just won’t work for some of us
thank goodness it came as part of the box, so u did not fork out the money specifically for it :S
xin´s last [type] ..Going Blue with Dior New Look Palette – (254) Bleu de Paris
Xin, that’s so true!
and I was really happy I had the chance to try it without having to buy it at retail price indeed.
Aw, sorry to hear this didn’t work out for you! I think the soap looks very cool though, it’s got that organic homemade vibe
Makeup Morsels´s last [type] ..The Wednesday Wigeon No.46
Makeup Morsels, it looks cool indeed. It was really a shame that it caused such havoc on my skin, but I know lots of people who are into organic products and love this.
Paula Begoun, the cosmetic cop, says bar soaps are not good for the skin cause the ingredients to make them solid -even after you wash them out- are left on the skin as a layer and are irritating and pore clogging. So maybe that, added to the laurel oil, affected your skin. I dont use bar soaps to avoid further acne problems.
Alejandra, that could be another reason why it didn’t work for my skin. I usually stay away from bar soaps because I find liquid ones are gentler on my skin but I was hoping this would be different as I know lots of people that rave about it.
I absloutely love your honesty here , I can’t get it why this craziness going about “Being Natural ” “Organic” …etc women are hyping these days , I don’t hate natural remedies but they aren’t all good either ! I remember asking about that all natural ingredients a family friend who was a professor of Pharamgology at the university , who always supported his beloved wives to cosmetics , and he replied saying :”They are good , but when resreached and used in the right way and dosage “
Meshmesha, I agree. I don’t hate natural remedies, in fact I use a few myself. But not all of them work and you need to know how to use them, otherwise they’re useless or even harmful.