Pinkie Brown smells of soap, we are told, in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. You might imagine he would smell sulphurous, but instead he has the innocuous, utilitarian smell of a bar of soap about him. In Annie Hall, Diane Keaton has Erno Laszlo’s famous black soap in her bathroom. Soap is everywhere and nowhere. Commonplace and ubiquitous. A recent report by Mintel found that, at slightly less than 50%, soap bars still have the largest share of the market, but they are steadily losing ground to liquid soaps and shower gels. As the block of soap disappears from view, it’s becoming something of a cult product. And nothing, soap-wise, is more cult than vintage soaps such as Claus Porto and Valobra. Claus Porto soaps (founded in 1887) come with faithfully reproduced art-deco wrappings and are milled seven times. Milling refers to the process of mixing the soap: the more times the soap elements are passed through the mill, the more air bubbles are forced out and the more evenly the fragrance is distributed. Valobra soaps (from www.npw.co.uk) are milled six times and have old-fashioned cologney scents. The company was founded a century ago by Virgilio Valobra in Genoa, Italy, and still uses 18th-century production processes. Liberty is the place to shop for soap. It has one of the biggest selections in London, with some 250 varieties, including exclusives by Demeter, which does a fabulous gin-and-tonic scented soap, and Aesop. “A good bar of soap is exactly the one granny had,” says Angela Creasey, the perfumery buyer for the store. “An old-fashioned, triple-milled, fragranced bar that’s creamy and doesn’t dissolve away.” Not so hot for Pinkie Brown, perhaps, but great for the rest of us.