Make an iconic soap: Maison Sarah Lavoine soap

What I create is iconic, it seems.

A few years ago, I created a soap with Maison Sarah Lavoine , and the brand called it “L'iconique”.

I was flattered, yet fell off my chair.
Don't exaggerate.

In fact, my soap factory, Ciment, was only 2 years old at the time, and for me, an iconic figure can't come out of nowhere.
It takes a long time to work on.
It has to prove itself.
Live adventures.
Hanging on the walls of teenagers' bedrooms.
It must be immediately identifiable.

It's Beyoncé, it's Pikachu, it's the Eiffel Tower.

So I went back and reread the definition of the word. Iconic is anything related to images.
At that price, any physical object is iconic.
Everything on Instagram is iconic.
Or maybe it refers to icons, in the religious sense. I don't really see the connection with my Maison Sarah Lavoine soap anymore, with all due respect.

Let's keep looking...

No need to go too far, the adjective "iconic" is in fact a calque of the English "iconic" which refers to something, often an object, which is emblematic of an era, striking, which stands out for its strong character. The Kelly bag from Hermès is iconic.

My soap was therefore an object with a strong character that stood out from the others.

Seen like that, Ciment soaps fit the definition. We recognize them at first glance. They have a nice place in the press. And it's the object itself, not its packaging, not its promotion, not the set design for the photo that does most of the work. It's the soap, all by itself, that we recognize by the edge of the bathtub, even when it no longer has its packaging.

The artistic director of Hermès, with whom I was talking the other day, said to me: "Your soaps are beautiful objects, you can recognize them among thousands, even when bare, even when worn."

And I think he sees very well what it is, an iconic object.

Solène Lebon