Last week I reviewed Oriza L. Legrand's Villa Lympia, a seashore-themed perfume with Belle Epoque-styled packaging. This week I'm continuing my summertime theme with Kalastyle's Swedish Dream Sea Salt Soap and Hand Creme, two body products featuring a "classic sea salt scent" and some very jaunty packaging of their own, with motifs of anchors and sailboats.
I've been using the Sea Salt Soap as a hand soap at the bathroom sink, but it would also be a fun treat in the shower and is even recommended as a shave soap. It's a chunky circular bar that gives off generous creamy lather and an a cheer-inducing scent — an aroma that really does evoke the salty breeze at the beach, with its mineral tang and its briny hints of seaweed and driftwood. There's also a hint of something lemon-y, and this combination reminds me of the fragrance blend in Caldrea's Sea Salt Neroli line. (Speaking of which, I need to restock!) The matching Sea Salt Hand Creme is similarly well-scented and leaves a lingering fragrance on skin; it's also thicker and more nourishing than I expected. It's always a nice surprise when impulse-purchase body products turn out to offer high quality formulas as well as appealing fragrances.
If you're visiting any family or friends this summer, perhaps even at their beach house, a set of Swedish Dream Sea Salt products would be a perfect gift for your hosts. Of course, you can always just indulge yourself, too. I've been using Sea Salt Soap and Hand Creme before spritzing on my favorite beach-air perfumes like Creative Universe Mare and Jo Malone Wood Sage & Sea Salt for a virtual "walk on the beach," and this layering effect gives me a quick mental vacation from my urban surroundings.
Swedish Dream Sea Salt Soap ($7 for 4.5 oz. bar) and Hand Creme ($13.50 for a full-size tube) or $4.50 for a travel-size tube are available through the Kalastyle website. A matching candle ($25) is also available.
I like lathery shave bars but sadly Sea Salt Neroli was my least favorite Caldera.
Love this packaging though.
I love the packaging, too! They also offer Seaweed and Sea Aster scents, which I haven’t tried yet.
I have used this soap in the shower…lovely and lathering. I did find it a bit drying though..but my skin is super sensitive and I was using it in the winter..
I need to try it in the shower now — and maybe even as a shave soap for legs!
This sounds delightful! I love sea air/beachy non-coconut scents for summer. never heard of it before (even though I’m in Sweden and everything!) but perhaps dreams of Sweden are best dreamt abroad.
Hah! These are “made in the USA,” incidentally — but the fantasy is very appealing. I visited Sweden once, ages ago… but I don’t think we made it to the seashore.
Love the packaging, and the soap and cream sound great for summer. Might be nice in a kitchen, too.
Yes! I love anything citrus-y or fresh near the kitchen sink.
I love this soap. Hubby and I found it at a gift shop in Maine and we’ve been hooked ever since. I love the salt in it because it feels great on my itchy skin. In the winter I’m itchy because it’s dry. In the summer because it’s hot. I need to try the hand cream next. I do like the scent as well.
I have a few skin complaints, too — weird springtime rashes on my hands, very dry legs in winter — and having the right soap really makes a difference in controlling them!
I love the hand cream, and recently found a distributor for the soap so should pick some up. It’s a great scent, very brisk and natural.
In Toronto?
“Brisk” is the perfect adjective to describe it!
I don’t normally love sea/ocean scents, but I might have to rethink them, since I love this soap, and used it last summer and have a bar in the shower now! It’s funny, because I had been thinking about buying the hand cream, and instead bought a tube of the Caldrea Sea Salt Neroli cream . . . and quite like it.
I guess I’d better go read your Villa Lympia review now!
I really don’t like any ocean/beach fragrance with coconut in it, or anything too “fresh” in that mainstream mens’ “sport” cologne way — but I do like the salt air vibe, in person (Coney Island!) or in a soap or perfume. I think I first realized this when I was wearing Rosine’s Ecume de Rose and DSH Beach Roses, and then I drifted into Creative Universe Mare and other seabreeze scents.
Setting a record – two posts in a day! – I discovered the soap last year and it is dreamy – I use it in the shower – and I am someone who despises the marine/aquatic/ozonic flavor of so many of today’s masculine mass market scents. I also tried the hand creme and liked it, although I really don’t need my hand creme to be so heavily scented. The packaging is adorable! Has anyone tried the other soaps? Seaweed? Sea Aster???
Keep it up, thomkallor!
I’m with you on the typical masculine ozonic thing — ergh. I really want to try the Seaweed and Sea Aster soaps now — I especially love the sea horse on the Seaweed box!