Wembé is a new company selling all-natural soaps crafted in Paraguay. Taking the rainforest as inspiration, Wembé has concocted more than a dozen blends of fruits, flowers, cocoa butters, and plant extracts, many of them native to South America. The handmade soaps are shipped to New York and distributed from the company’s Brooklyn offices, spreading a bit of “Amazonian soul” to bathrooms throughout the city and beyond.
The word “wembé” is a variation on “guembé,” a name for the “monster fruit” trees that grow throughout the Amazon rainforest region. None of Wembé’s soaps actually include guembé fruit or leaves, but they’re packed with plenty of other lush ingredients. Of the varieties I’ve tried so far, my favorites are the Snow Cleansing Blend and the White Rose Cleansing Blend (see image below). Snow is a pure white bar that smells like peppermint, until it’s lathered up and it releases a note of eucalyptus oil. It has a gently invigorating effect, but the scent is creamy rather than full-on tingly. White Rose naturally appealed to me, since I’m such a rose-lover, and it didn’t disappoint me. The top layer of the soap contains rose petals, and the bar has a fragrance of true rose mingled with something greener and delicately earthy — maybe palmarosa, maybe geranium.
I also enjoyed Wembé’s Loofah Exfoliating Blend, which is actually a circular slice of loofah embedded in a moisturizing soap. It has a light, herbaceous fragrance (from dill essential oil) and its scrubby fibers eliminated the dry skin on my elbows and heels within a week. The catalogue goes on and on: cleansing blends with avocado, mango, or cocoa, exfoliating blends with real coconut or yerba mate, and so on. Each bar is cut in a chunky little cube that’s easy to handle, and if the other blends are anything like the ones I’ve tested, they’ll lather easily and rinse cleanly.
Wembé’s website images reminded me immediately of The Dream, a painting by the Post-Impressionist artist Henri Rousseau. Just like Rousseau’s fantastic scene, Wembé’s story brings together two worlds and offers a journey for the senses and the imagination. Sure, it's just soap, but it's an easy way to bring a exotic touch of fragrance and well-being into your day.
Each bar of soap sells for $7 through the Wembé website.
Oh dear, I am as much a cool soaps whore as I am a lotion whore. Not too expensive, unless it is a really dinky bar.
Bookmarked.
Hi Tama, They seem competitively priced, considering their quality, so why not. 😉
Jessica, The Amazona Rain Forest is in Brazil, 3000 km far from Paraguay. I´m pretty sure those soaps are awsome, but this business smells bad. I would like to know how they get the raws materials. Sometimes, amazonian indians sell trees, flowers, exotic fruits, essential oils for pennies.
Hi Romix,
The company has a Paraguayan owner, and their products are definitely designed to evoke the “experience” of the rainforest, but I don’t think they’re claiming to obtain their ingredients directly from the rainforest itself. Perhaps they’ll add more information about their sourcing to their website at some point.
Hey, don’t forget the Amazon rain forests in Vzla, Peru, Guyana, etc… ! …And non-Amazonian rain forests throughout C. America – it’s quite possible they’re obtaining the ingredients from the ‘lesser’ rain forests.
The soaps sound fabulous – they remind me of Lush but without the price tag or marketing gimmick.
Hi, Prettythings! That’s an interesting comparison. Lush has some excellent products, but its soaps are full of artificial fragrance and dyes, as well as other synthetic ingredients, and they can be quite stripping to the skin. (They’re also not very long-lasting, especially for the price tag.) This company, which is much smaller, also discusses its eco-conscious approach, but its soaps are more truly natural.
Jessica, thanks for the info… this just shows how susceptible I am to marketing – I was under the impression their products were all-natural. Now that I know, I can feel less guilty about not liking Lush as much as I thought I should!
Oh, there is no “should” here! I’m hooked on certain LUSH products, like Angels on Bare Skin and the massage bars, which are all/mostly natural… but I think there are better “green” options for soap and haircare!
My problem with Lush is that their products are full of essential oils and such that are very likely to irritate the skin. Obviously, a lot of people are able to use the Lush line without discomfort. But it just seems like such a silly thing for a skincare company to do!
The image you posted reminds *me* of John Everett Millais’s Ophelia. The BBC has just broadcast a new series about the Pre-Raphaelites. I gave it a miss: I read everything I could lay my hands on about the Brotherhood when I was a teenager (they appeal mostly to adolescents – all that angst, all that passion!), but my tastes have evolved a little bit since then; although they are still the first paintings I go and see whenever I visit Tate Britain – in memory of my younger self. Millais’s Ophelia look a lot more uncomfortable in the water than this red-lipped lady here. LOL!
Hi, Bela! I was deeply obsessed with the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites in my late teens, too. And yes, all those sad Marianas and Isabellas, and all those woeful Ophelias and Elaines and Ladies of Shalott, drowning and drifting in flowery landscapes! But I think this Wembe’ woman will survive her bath. 😉
But what’s with the strange voyeur in the background?
Well, that second figure is one of the reasons I thought of the Rousseau painting… but who knows. It’s probably just her room-mate; rents are extremely high in NYC, you know! 😉
Or just her friendly neighborhood stalker. 🙂
Directly from the Wembé headquarters out of NYC, we say thank you Jessica for writing such an amazing article; I’m glad we left such a great impression that you would stick up for us. There are a couple of issues that we at Wembé would like to address. First off, The reason we call our line the Amazonian Soul is because Paraguay has a large extension of tropical rainforest that the Amazonian Forest is also part of. This is called the South Atlantic Forest. The AMAZONS are a region of that forest through which the Amazon River flows. Second, We are working on organic certification. We understand this is a huge issue in the United States, because some products here just aren’t made the same way as in less industrialized countries. We are a new company so we ask our supporters to bare with us. Third, we get our ingredients from various sources, such as our own gardens at the workshop premises, small local farmers (at above market rates), even the water used is spring water that runs under the workshop. Some materials have to be procured through other channels simply because you can’t get it from locals or are seasonal. None of our suppliers test on animals, and I use my self, family and friends to test every new product that Wembé has to offer. And it’s awesome! We hope most questions have been answered. We keep an open door to inquiries, any feed back is great feed back!
Thank you
Rolando Zuccolillo
CEO Wembé
Ps. Brazil shares 1000 km of borders with Paraguay (From Iguazu to the Pantanal). =)
Rolando, Thank you for this information! Glad you enjoyed the article.