Arko Shaving Soap Stick

The Arko stick is a short cylinder of hard white shaving soap, 75 grams, wrapped in a red paper sleeve with foil-closed ends. On the wrapper a smiling, dark-haired man looks out from a scalloped blue oval, his jaw hidden under a white beard of lather; beneath him the name arko is set in tall black and white letters, and under that the words Berber Tıraş Sabunu, barber's shaving soap. The stick is rubbed straight on to a wet face, or cut into a mug, and worked into lather with a brush.

Its maker, Evyap, began as a soap works in Erzurum in 1927 and became one of Turkey's largest makers of soap and toiletries. Arko was its shaving name. The company's own history begins the brand in 1957 with this soap, which it calls the first shave-preparation product sold in Turkey, and Turkish Wikipedia notes that the public first knew Arko as a red, cylinder-shaped shaving soap.

A long family followed: a shaving cream in 1960, then foam, cologne, balm, gel, lotion and, from 2007, razors. In 2008 the shaving brand became Arko Men, and its packaging has been redrawn more than once since. The stick was left largely alone. Its wrapper still carries the lathered face and the old barber's description, and the maker now gives the formula as creamy and enriched with vitamin E.

The stick is cheap, costing little more than a pound, and it has travelled well beyond Turkey. Turkish barbers use it, according to one Istanbul retailer, and wet-shaving shops in Europe, America and Australia stock it among far costlier soaps, describing a milled tallow soap with a thick lather and a clean, old-fashioned barbershop scent. A photograph of three sticks taken in 2014 shows the same red wrapper and the same lathered face that the Turkish supermarket shelf carries today.