Washing your hands, while necessary for practical reasons, should feel less like a chore and more like a spa experience. Yes, as far as the finer soaps go, of course we must show reverence (no pun intended) for Aesop’s epicly popular hand wash, but it’s not the only one out there. I am a proud devotee of tomato-scented suds, self-proclaimed herbaceous formulas, and the latest hand soap iteration of the smoky, Icelandic sitka spruce fragrance from the perfumerie of Sigur Ros’ frontman. What you will find below: a curation of hand soaps that lean into an herb garden-forward olfactory experience; hand soaps that feel like they could have been handed down to you from The Giving Tree, or else crafted with a mortar and pestle in a lush Mediterranean estate. What you won’t find below is a smorgasbord of saccharine, overpowering, or flowery hand washes and soaps. (Sorry, Pink Sugar loyalists.)
The way we smell matters, both to ourselves and those in our orbit. Compared to most of the perfumes I pine after, some of the best fancy hand soaps below are also much less expensive, but still succeed in their common goal of making you smell nice, look worldly, and feel, well, fancy. If you love to cook and want a little TLC for your hands, I have rounded up my marquee selection of the best fancy hand soaps for every budget.
