True Tannin Persimmon SoapThe bar. One job, done properly.
What is in itFour ingredients, and why each one is there.
How to use itFive places to spend a few extra seconds.
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How it works
The short version: the smell is made on your skin all day, so you cannot wash it off once in the morning and be done. Here is each part of that, one at a time.
Nothing here is a trade secret. It is the ordinary chemistry of skin as it gets older, and one old Japanese answer to it.
In 2001 a Japanese team published a study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology on what older skin gives off. They named a compound: 2-nonenal. It was barely present under 40 and showed up consistently over 40.
Your skin makes oil, which is normal and good for you. The mix of fats in that oil shifts as you age. When those fats meet air they break down, and 2-nonenal is one of the things left behind.
Soap is built to grab oil and dirt and carry them off with the water. It is good at that. It only works on things that are already there waiting to be picked up.
2-nonenal is produced on your skin as the oil breaks down, all day. Wash it off at 7am and your skin keeps making more by lunchtime. There was never anything for the scrubbing to catch.
Persimmon tannin has been used in Japan for hundreds of years on cloth, rope and skin to take smells out rather than cover them. It is still used in deodorizing products there today.
A perfume sits on top and fades faster than what is underneath it. A tannin grabs onto the compound itself, so it can be rinsed away with the water instead.
Tannin is the part that works on odor, but a bar still has to clean. Coconut oil does that, and does it without leaving older skin dry and tight the way a harsher base would.
Green tea and hyaluronic acid are in there for the same reason. Skin holds onto moisture less well as it gets older, so a bar you use every single day has to put something back rather than only take away.
Nothing stops your skin making oil, and you would not want it to. This is a normal change, like grey hair. It is not a disease and it is not a hygiene problem.
Your clothes hold some of this too, so a wardrobe takes a few washes to catch up. Judge it after about four weeks of daily use. If it has not worked by then, we refund you.
