Design 
Quality of Materials 
Value for Money 
Craftsmanship 
Customer Service Soap bars and I don’t usually get along.
Of course, given my relationship with body wash and its inability to soap up my whole body after squirting out half of the bottle, you could say bar soap and I should really be better friends.
The issue, though, is the chemicals.
Many readily available bar soaps do a good job at cleaning your skin, but potentially too good a job due to the presence of harsh chemicals with scientific names that you’ll never correctly pronounce.
Some of these harsh chemicals are technically acids, which I suppose explains the scratchy, dry skin I can get year round when using the wrong soap. There’s nothing like trying to get a good tan on your thighs when the weather turns warm and discovering scaly, ashy-looking skin.
In these instances, I’ve turned to natural soaps, which are known for their high-quality, moisturizing ingredients that nourish the skin and don’t strip away its natural oils.
Only problem is that 99% of natural soaps smell like baby powder, lilacs, or moth balls.
What’s a guy to do?
I turned to Google to see if I could find a natural soap brand that was targeted towards men.
That’s when I found Dapper Yankee.
What Is Dapper Yankee?
Dapper Yankee was founded by a guy who believes manhood is more than being tough, strong, and a steel wall of repressed emotions.
He believes in caring for those around you, lifting others up when they’re down, prioritizing your family, and caring for yourself.
One of the ways he found that the self-care market for men was lacking was in hair and body care products. No different from any of us, he struggled with dry, itchy skin and a dry scalp due to using products from big-name, commercial brands.
His hunt for natural, beneficial products took them to mostly women’s products, but he found some men’s products that cleared up his skin and scalp issues and served to “break the glass” around hair and body products you readily find on store shelves.
These natural men’s products were an improvement, but didn’t completely satisfy, so he set out to create Dapper Yankee: premium, American-made natural soaps and personal care products that are made in small batches and smell manly.
Things to Consider Before Buying Personal Care Products From Dapper Yankee
The first thing is your skin and its current condition.
If you’ve got ashy, dry, or irritated skin and want to regain the unproblematic skin of your childhood, you should consider using a natural soap like Dapper Yankee.
Natural soaps are made from primarily naturally-occurring ingredients that cost slightly more than the typical chemicals you find in soap bars, but are significantly more moisturizing and nourishing to your skin, with zero side effects.
These soaps have never failed to clear up my dry skin after several days of use, especially in the winter months.
Another consideration is your budget. Natural soap bars generally find themselves in the $8/bar range, which, if you’re used to Irish Spring, can seem pricey. Dapper Yankee’s natural soap is about $8 per bar, and they last 2-3 weeks if you store them in a place where water can drain away.
Although this may seem like a lot of cash to fork over for a single bar of soap, the multitude of benefits and good scents Dapper Yankee’s natural soap can bring to your skin is well worth it.
Dapper Yankee makes seriously good-smelling soaps from natural, healthy ingredients that lather well, last long, and actually don't stain your clothes. Their other personal care products like shampoo and conditioner bars and natural deodorants bring a lot of the same qualities. I would like to see them add a soap subscription program so that you and I can automate our soap buying and save some money, but that might be coming in the future.
Dapper Yankee Review
I wanted to get a good understanding of the wide variety of scents Dapper Yankee offers, and also see how strong some of their more adventurous scents are. So, I grabbed their Game Day, Root Beer Barrel, New Castle, and Gin and Juice soaps.
Unboxing
The brand prioritizes good customer service and quick shipping times, which I can attest to. After ordering that whole slew of products, a tidy package was on my doorstep in about 3 business days.
I got a good sense of how strong their soap smells as soon as I opened the box and a wave of mixed scents smacked me in the face.
Each soap comes in a neat cardboard box with a small side cutout that allows you to get a good sniff of the soap without opening the box. I’m a big fan of the brand’s packaging, with its old-timey font, clean lines, and premium-looking colors.
I’ve noticed that some soaps feel slightly soft when you take them out of the box, and it’s easy to make indentations on their surface. This is the result of a shorter curing process, which all soaps have to go through and which makes the soap hard.
A harder soap lasts longer, and won’t simply melt away after a few uses.
When I pulled Dapper Yankee’s soaps from their boxes, I noticed immediately that each bar was hard and felt dense, indicating that these bars had gone through the full curing process and wouldn’t quickly disintegrate.
I verified this through actually using the soap, too. Some natural soaps that I’ve used have noticeably gotten smaller even after a single use, but Dapper Yankee’s held up well.
Each soap comes in at 4.7 to 5.0 ounces. The range is due to a potentially longer curing process while the soap sits in the box before it’s purchased and used, at which point more water can evaporate from the soap and reduce its overall weight.
I appreciate Dapper Yankee’s honesty here. I’ve opened some soap boxes to be rudely surprised by how small the soap bar is, kind of like opening a bag of chips and seeing that it’s a third full.
Soaps
Each soap lathers well and spreads easily over the full length of my body, which is my bare minimum bar for a quality soap. Also, the scent of each bar transfers well to my skin, which doesn’t always happen.
Natural soaps are generally good at this, due to using shea butter and coconut oil. Both of these natural ingredients carry scent well and moisturize the skin, and can infuse your skin with their scent at the same time.
Dapper Yankee’s scents, in particular, stayed with my skin well. If you’ve ever wanted to smell like a root beer barrel or gin and juice right after a shower, Dapper Yankee can hook you up.
Overall, I’m a huge fan of these soaps and they’ve been keeping my skin moisturized and happy. Here’s a little more info on each:
Game Day
Special Ingredients: Coconut oil and shea butter provide maximum hydration to your skin, and pumice gives the soap a slight grit that helps to exfoliate away dead skin cells.
Scent: Fir, lemon, cardamom, musk, vetiver, jasmine, and potentially the sweet smell of victory
My Thoughts: I love the grit in this soap. It’s the perfect amount to give the feeling of a good scrub, but won’t scour your skin. Huge fan of the scent, too: cardamom and jasmine smell heavenly by themselves, and even better when combined with Game Day’s other fragrances.
This soap is dedicated to the founder’s favorite college football team, which they cheekily allude to on the inside lid of the box.
Like all of Dapper Yankee’s soaps, Game Day is chemical, paraben, and cruelty-free, and great for daily use on all skin types. I understand why this is Dapper Yankee’s best-selling soap.
Root Beer Barrel
Special Ingredients: Goat milk helps deeply moisturize the skin and gives a rich, luxurious lather, and activated charcoal detoxifies and purifies the skin.
Scent: A root beer float (no joke, and it’s better than you might think)
My Thoughts: While I wasn’t initially enthusiastic about smelling like a root beer float, I actually really enjoy this soap. It doesn’t have any grit, and the use of goat milk gives a more luxurious lathering experience. I’ve had cravings for an actual root beer float so many times since using this soap bar.
Root Beer Barrel is formulated with activated charcoal, which I’ve seen clear up body acne and actively prevent more body acne from forming. The root beer and vanilla scent is strong right out of the box, but after using it the smell wasn’t too strong on my skin, which I was grateful for.
If you’re like me, you probably don’t want people thinking you hopped in the shower to just dump a can of root beer over your head, and you don’t have to worry about that with this soap.
New Castle
Special Ingredients: Avocado and kaolin clay, which provide a rich, moisturizing lather and help absorb excess oil and impurities from the surface of the skin.
Scent: Woodsy scents of bergamot, leather, spiced musk, cypress, sandalwood, and more
My Thoughts: This soap is great. It doesn’t have any grit, and I like how luxurious the lather gets from the cocoa butter and avocado.
I love soaps that use kaolin clay, and New Castle is no exception. The clay gives the slightest exfoliation, which helps to polish the skin, while the avocado moisturizes deeply. It has the classic, manly scents of wood and leather, too, which I’ve always been a fan of, but they’re not overpowering.
Some wood and leather scents that I’ve been around have smelled more like a burnt tire, but this soap is balanced out with cypress, bergamot, and spiced musk to create a well-rounded fragrance.
Gin and Juice
Special Ingredients: Shea butter and avocado oil moisturize the skin deeply, and mica provides the vibrant purple color naturally.
Scent: Juniper berry, sage, and citrus, a.k.a gin and juice
My Thoughts: I’ve said for a long time that gin and juice is a highly underappreciated drink, so I’m feeling affirmed that other people like it enough to turn it into a soap. It smells fantastic. Take all the good parts of gin, like the fresh scent of juniper berries, and balance it with some sage and citrus and you’ve got a fresh scent.
I was skeptical of this soap even more than the Root Beer Barrel, but I love the scent and its moisturizing properties. The striking purple, black, and white swirls seemed like artificial-coloring at first, but it turns out that you can get these from various forms of mica naturally.
This soap doesn’t just smell good, either. It’s formulated with shea butter, avocado oil, and coconut for a deeply hydrating and nourishing experience. Whereas having a few too many gin and juices will leave you dehydrated, there’s only hydration to be found with this soap.
Deodorants
Dapper Yankee also makes natural deodorants, so if there’s a soap scent that you want to carry with you throughout your day, you can find it with their deodorant. I grabbed their Game Day and New Castle Deodorants, which were my favorite scents.
All of their deodorants are aluminum-free, paraben-free, baking soda-free, alcohol-free, and cruelty-free, so you can smear these onto your ‘pits guilt-free.
New Castle Natural Deodorant
Special Ingredients: Arrow root powder naturally absorbs sweat, and zinc ricinoleate absorbs odors and unpleasant toxins.
Scent: Identical to the New Castle Soap with bergamot, spiced musk, cypress, sandalwood, tobacco, and suede
My Thoughts: This natural deodorant is the most similar to a normal deodorant that I’ve ever encountered in terms of how it spreads on and kills odors. It’s easy to use, smells great, and cheaper than competing natural deodorants.
Every natural deodorant I’ve ever used has had a radically different application experience. Some deodorants are super hard and gritty, others are more liquid and you have to fan your armpits after application to get it to dry.
Either way you have it, they’re super different from a normal deodorant experience.
Dapper Yankee’s New Castle Deodorant, despite using natural ingredients throughout, has a very normal application experience and smells great as well. The natural ingredients are great at absorbing the New Castle woodsy fragrances and transferring them to your skin, and after a full day of wearing this my ‘pits were still smelling fresh.
Game Day Natural Deodorant
Special Ingredients: Game Day has the same ingredients as the New Castle deodorant, besides the fragrance.
Scent: Identical to the Game Day Soap Bar, with lemon, cardamom, jasmine, must, and vetiver
My Thoughts: Another great deodorant from Dapper Yankee—it goes on easy and smells great for a full day. I love how much it feels like a normal deodorant without having aluminum, parabens, and other harmful ingredients.
These deodorants use healthy, natural ingredients that are fast-absorbing and designed for use without irritation. Many deodorants use baking soda to absorb odors and keep you smelling good, but baking soda is actually irritating to lots of people.
Dapper Yankee uses arrow root powder instead, which is completely natural and absorbs sweat and odors just as well, but without irritation. Both of these deodorants also use zinc oxide, which doubles down on the sweat and odor-absorption properties.
Shampoo Bar
I was entirely unfamiliar with shampoo bars before using this, so if you didn’t know that shampoo can take the form of a brick don’t worry—you’re not alone.
From an ingredients standpoint, the shampoo bars and soap bars have some overlap, but the shampoo bar differs with its use of jojoba and macadamia nut oil. Jojoba oil is vitamin-rich and great for strengthening hair, and macadamia nut oil is a scalp hydrator that helps to boost shine and regulate oil production.
I figured that you’d have to create a lather between your hands and the shampoo bar before applying it to your hair, but it turns out you can just rub this shampoo brick right on your head.
It was an odd feeling at first, but really no different in the end. The shampoo lathers well and didn’t leave my hair feeling squeaky clean, which happens when all the healthy, natural oils have been stripped out.
I got the Rodeo Man Shampoo Bar, which has a complex scent of bay leaf, fir needle, bergamot, and tobacco that, in their own words, “will drive everyone wild.” In other words, it smells great and cleans my hair well.
Also, if you’ve got a beard or little to no hair on your head, Dapper Yankee’s Shampoo Bar is still a great choice.
Hair Conditioner Bar
To double down on the Rodeo Man scent, I also got the Rodeo Man Hair Conditioner Bar.
This little hockey puck of hair hydration is formulated with Vitamin E and Lactic Acid, both of which help to repair and hydrate dry, damaged hair and improve its texture.
Similar to the Shampoo Bar, you can rub this straight onto your head and then use your fingertips to spread it evenly through from your roots to the ends.
I can tell that a conditioner has worked by how my hair dries after the shower. If my hair feels slightly frizzy and almost unmanageable without the use of hair sculpting products, the conditioner didn’t get enough moisture back into my hair.
That’s not the case with Dapper Yankee’s Conditioner Bar, thankfully. My hair feels well-nourished, moisturized, unfrizzy, and it smells great, too.
Although I didn’t have enough time to
Otherwise, your bars will melt away and bacteria on the surface of the soap has more potential to breed into a cesspool-like state.
Sierra Pine Hair Style Balm
Dapper Yankee also makes a natural hair styling balm. Hair styling products are typically hard to find with natural ingredients, so I was curious to see how the Hair Style Balm held up against my thick, dense hair.
Like most styling balms, you have to dig pretty hard to get your finger into the product. Once I dug a little out, it warmed quickly in my hands and I was able to spread it between my fingertips, and then easily spread it through my hair.
I typically look for a light to medium hold in styling balms, and the Sierra Pine Hair Style Balm hit the spot. Some formulations I’ve used have been too thick to spread easily down towards the roots of my hair, which leads to an insufficient hold.
Since the Sierra Pine Balm spreads easily, I found it gave my hair good support and structure with an appropriate amount of shine, without feeling crunchy.
The pine smell is awesome, too. I was initially worried that this would smell like pine tar and be overpowering, but it’s a mild pine scent that smells fresh and clean.
Sierra Pine Natural Liquid Soap
If you’re not a big bar soap guy but still want to use natural soap, Dapper Yankee might have a solution for you with their Sierra Pine Liquid Soap.
This soap is intended as a hand soap, but they’re clear that you can use it for your body as well, if desired.
It has the same fresh, non-overwhelming smell as the Sierra Pine Hair Style Balm, and is only $12 for a 10 oz. bottle. That may sound like a lot for a hand wash, but this soap is made with a thicker formulation that allows it to spread further while using less.
I mentioned earlier that my main reason for using bar soap is because body washes are hard to spread across your entire body, so I decided to see if this hand and body wash could change my mind.
I started with a nickel-sized squirt of the soap and lathered it between my hands before applying it to the rest of my body, and almost got everything covered. Not bad for a body wash, not bad at all.
What Do Other Reviewers Say?
Dapper Yankee is well loved by all sorts of dudes, especially for its scents. I saw the Game Day, Root Beer Barrel, Gin and Juice, and Arctic Blueberry scents mentioned most frequently, and most reviewers had good things to say about how well these soaps lather and how long they last.
Of the few negative reviews I could find, most had to do with the smells being too strong for some people. If you’re like my wife and have the nose of a bloodhound, I can definitely see this happening, but for most people, the strong scents are a plus.
My Thoughts Overall on Dapper Yankee
What I Like
- I’m a big fan of the unique and out-of-the-box scents this brand carries. Other men’s natural soap brands exist, but they don’t have scents like Dapper Yankee.
- Their soaps are made with natural ingredients that infuse your skin with nutrients, moisture, and good smells.
- They have excellent customer service. I sent a test email to their customer service line and got an answer back in 15 minutes on a Saturday morning.
- Their deodorants smell great, go on easy, and effectively counteract sweat and stink without using harsh chemicals and aluminum.
- The shampoo and conditioner bars are great for all hair types and carry on the great scents.
- The natural hair styling balm has a good medium hold and light shine, which is hard to do with only natural ingredients.
What I Don’t Like
- Some of the colored soaps can drip and leave colored residue on the bottom of your shower, but it washes away easily.
- They don’t currently offer a soap subscription program, which would save you money and time ordering their soap long term.
Who Is Dapper Yankee For?
Dapper Yankee is targeted at men, but it’s really for anyone who can appreciate good smells and wants to clean their bodies and hair with natural, nourishing ingredients. Many of Dapper Yankee’s soap scents, like Arctic Blueberry and Gin and Juice, are unisex.
The Verdict
Dapper Yankee is all about experiencing your daily personal care routines at a higher level. That means better scents, better ingredients, and better results, and they’ve done just that.
Their soaps smell fantastic, lather well, last long, and deeply hydrate the skin, and their other personal care products are made with the same intention and quality ingredients.
They’ve got excellent, responsive customer service if you experience any problems with your order or have questions, which sets them apart from other men’s natural soap brands.
While they don’t offer a subscription service that gives you a discount on their soap and automates its delivery on a monthly basis, who knows, they may in the future.
If you’re in the market for soap and other personal care products that have fun and funky scents, use natural ingredients, and are gentle on your skin, check out Dapper Yankee.
Dapper Yankee makes seriously good-smelling soaps from natural, healthy ingredients that lather well, last long, and actually don't stain your clothes. Their other personal care products like shampoo and conditioner bars and natural deodorants bring a lot of the same qualities. I would like to see them add a soap subscription program so that you and I can automate our soap buying and save some money, but that might be coming in the future.
FAQs
Should men wash with bar soap?
If you struggle with dry, irritated skin, use a natural bar soap.
What are the benefits of using natural deodorant as a man?
The main benefit is that natural deodorants don’t contain aluminum-based compounds and other harsh chemicals that are known to be bad for your body.
How do you make bar soap last longer?
The best ways are to keep your soap away from areas that are consistently wet in your shower, and store your soap on a dish that allows water to drain away from it.
