Soap. It’s clean, intimate and instantly familiar, with a faint, powdery, parma violet-like aroma that lingers close. What it’s not is perfume, but Perfumer H and Studio Nicholson are here to change that. Enter the new collaborative fragrance from the London-based British perfumer and British no-nonsense clothing brand aptly named – you guessed it – Soap.
“This fragrance is quite groundbreaking in that it creates a veil on the skin and creates this layer of beauty between the skin and the clothes…. it’s magical, genderless and timeless,” says Lyn Harris, founder of Perfumer H. “It’s a skin perfume that goes onto your clothes so you smell for days this gentle undercurrent of soap that warms your heart and defines your style.”
Formulated to evoke the feeling of clean fabric as it traces skin, Soap Eau de Parfum captures something deliberately elusive: the warmth and familiarity of a lived-in garment. Not freshly laundered linen folded away, but cotton, wool and flax as they move, crease and soften with wear. Weightless, invisible and essential, the scent is built as Harris describes clothes she herself wears daily – pieces that don’t announce themselves, but quietly complete the person wearing them.
The collaboration with Studio Nicholson feels like the natural extension of a long time conversation. Harris and Nick Wakeman – founder of Studio Nicholson – have known each other since the ’90s, when Wakeman worked as a buyer in London. “Nick got my style and would sell me so much stuff,” Harris recalls. That shared understanding has only deepened over time. Studio Nicholson has been part of Harris’s personal uniform since the brand launched in 2010. “The brand is just a symbol of our culture and how we love to wear clothes simply with beautiful fabrics and cool shapes that are timeless,” she says. “One of the main underlying things has been that I wanted to create something that Nick loved and also represented her brand on every level. Soap does just this… it has Nick’s vibe as well as the Studio Nicholson genderless and utility feel.”
The fragrance itself is composed as an intimate blend: cardamom and white pepper softened by aldehydes and orange flower, settling into a tender base of white musks, ambrox and tonka. Inspirations range from Italian barbershops to Harris’s grandmother, who used the same soap her entire life. Wakeman’s own obsession with “the smell of Italian Barber shops and clean starched fabrics when they first come into the studio” is what led to the name. “Soap has a certain warmth and familiarity about it that we liked,” Harris says.
Soap also comes as an incense, produced by one of the few traditional incense makers in Japan, supplying local Buddhist temples and monasteries. “We both love detail and having the best suppliers, so it was a must,” says Harris.
Alongside the launch of the fragrance, Wakeman has designed a capsule collection of three garments that sit within the same, utilitarian vein as Soap: a lightweight Italian cotton shirt, soft cotton twill trousers and a blue Soap baseball cap, all made in Italy. Inspired by Harris’s own uniform, the pieces mirror the fragrance’s intent – familiar, precise and quietly personal.
“We started talking about the smell of fabrics and the idea of a fragrance that would be almost like a fabric,” Wakeman says. “Then we moved on to thinking about how fabrics feel against your skin.” The result is something that doesn’t seek to define its wearer, but, as both women agree, simply completes them.
Shop Soap here. Photography courtesy of Perfumer H.
