Want More Luxury in Your Life? Try Soap

The humble bar of soap has had “a remarkable resurgence,” says Maria João Nogueira Mendes, spokeswoman for Portugal’s 131-year-old luxury brand Claus Porto, famous for its eye-catching packaging. Customers now consider everything from how it feels in the hand to how it looks on the vanity, from the lusciousness of its lather to its rich scent. Bar soap sales have doubled in the past five years at England’s eco-conscious Lush Cosmetics Ltd., outpacing growth across the rest of the company.

Nostalgia for simpler, iconic products partly drives the trend, Mendes says, but consumers are also gravitating to more minimal grooming regimens with products that last longer and don’t use plastic packaging. As a response to ubiquitous liquid soap pumps from brands such as Aesop appearing in aspirational bathrooms everywhere, Karen Kim founded Binu Binu, which makes a barley-tea-infused line of bars inspired by Korean bathhouses. She says the appeal of a bar is its design potential—to have “a sculptural object to cleanse your body.”