Review of Target's Duchess Soap

I love browsing the bath isle at Target simply because it has a lovely scent, and they always seem to be stocked up on new and seasonal bath products and scents.
The spring collection of new bath products included a new name I had never heard before, called Duchess. This spring line included bar soap, perfume, body spray and powder, and many other awesome girly goodies. What I loved best of all though was the Duchess' clever packaging. A queens crown is their logo, and the way all of their products are packaged in a hot pink color make them fun, flirty, and of course, eye catching.
I was able to get a sniff test of the Duchess perfume, and I could actually smell the lovely floral scent through the wax wrapping of the bar of soap. It reminded me of Gardenia mixed with honey suckle, creating a heavenly scent of floral musk.
Their product prices though, blew me away! The only thing I found affordable was the $8.00 bar of soap! The soap was large though, and I knew that the one bar would last me for months.
At home I imagined what color the soap would be, and if it would have small specks of herbs and flowers throughout the bar, but when I peeled away the pink wrapping, I was greeted with a lovely scented hello, and a pale yellow colored brick of soap. The soap itself was nothing to look at, but the scent was gorgeous. The Duchess soap however was hard, and there was no way in hell I could cut this into sample sized pieces to save the rest from melting. I had no choice but to bring the entire bar in the shower with me.
In the shower I will say, I dropped the bulky bar a number of times. I rubbed it along my skin, and after a good while I had a nice bubbly lather covering my entire body. The scent though seemed to of weakened up a tad once water hit it. Now usually soaps scents will activate when warm water hits them, but this was not the case with the Duchess bar. The scent was still nice, but it definitely kicked it down a few notches.
After rinsing off my skin felt clean but not clean enough. I dried off, and the scent disappeared. My skin didn't even feel slightly moisturized. I was pretty disappointed in my large bar of Duchess. When I spend $8 on a soap I expect something either in the shower, or out. In the shower I expect scent, and lots of it, and out of the shower if the scent was not fabulous my skin should at least be moisturized. The Duchess however gave me neither. This bar only smells good when you don't use it! What gives?
I still have the Duchess sitting in a soap dish, slowly melting away into a glob of snot. It makes as a good hand soap, but other than that it is a waste of money. Buying the soap has totally steered me away from anything from this company. I would have gone back and bought the perfume if the soap provided something for my money, but in all honesty it seems to be another one of those chemical bars of soap, with a few dabs of cheap oil in it for scent; wrapped up in a pretty package and given a cool name.
Guess I will stick to my all natural soaps.
Availability:
The Duchess line I believe is ONLY being sold at Target in stores, you cannot even purchase it online as of now. That's a good thing though, hopefully the Duchess line is replaced by someone else's line of products. I would hate to see a fall scent taking up valuable space on the counters made by the Duchess company.
For me, the Duchess soap and Duchess line is a rip-off. They may smell fantastic in the store, but the moment you use them in the bath or on the body the scent s gone.
I do however give them credit, they have some excellent bait dangling in your face as their packages are beautiful. Now if only they worked a bit more on what is in the packaging. Sigh.