My Kaizen arrived today. Just in time, as I was able to get in a nice shave for tonight’s celebration of my first anniversary. My wife already LOVES the scent of this soap.

With all of the folks posting and the videos of guys giving it a first go, I noticed everyone of them remarked that they overloaded the brush. I decided to go minimalistic with my first use. I took the smallest synthetic I have, 22mm yaqi tuxedo. I had a damp brush, giving it 10 swirls clockwise and counter, nothing more. This soap was not just noticeably thirsty but insanely thirsty. I only do a two pass shave most of the time but wanted to see how far this could stretch. WOW!!! No kidding, I had a third lathering that was every bit as rich and full as my first.

I know a good number of us enthusiasts regard the Ruds shave scores as a good measure of the quality of a product to gauge if we want to purchase. Breaking the scale of 100 to give this soap base a score of 101 was selling it short in my opinion. I honestly didn’t think there was that much room for improvement over the last formula, but there certainly is a lot. I also don’t think some of the soaps that were scored 100 a few months back are anywhere close to this base.

Way to break through the ceiling with this one Peter Charkalis. Seriously! I can’t believe this is not only living up to, but exceeding the hype.
-  Randy Garling 

Ariana & Evans is a brand started by Peter Charkalis, who is passionate about the universe of perfumes and the incredible sensory power of smell. His travels and curiosity allows him to create, collaborate and make available scents that are uniquely different, edgy and without compromise.

Ariana & Evans aims to democratize niche perfumery and make the perfumery market more open, accessible and known to the general public.

"Perfume is possibly the most sought after and tangible luxury goods. At Ariana & Evans, we want to promote this maxim with the customer always in focus."