We've changed everything. Except what matters.
A new logo, new soap designs, a new website. After more than ten years, MuSK has a new face, even though the most important things stay the same. And while we're showing how far we've come, it's only right to say where we actually started.
Browse our soaps
This story didn't begin with a logo, and it certainly doesn't end with a new website. It began with a wedding.
The wedding that's to blame for it all
It was 2015 when a friend asked Lucka whether she'd make soaps for her wedding guests. They were meant to be handmade, personal and a little different from anything you could buy in a shop. Lucka said yes and got to work, with no idea at the time that she'd agreed to something far bigger than making wedding favours.
The wedding soaps turned out well. The guests snapped them up and asked where they came from, and the answer “Lucka made them” clearly wasn't enough for them. Gradually more requests came in, then the first orders, and out of one favour grew something that had long stopped being just soap making for friends.
It became a passion that very quickly grew into a brand of its own. MuSK grew recipe by recipe, batch by batch and year by year. Today it's a soap workshop with more than ten years of making, testing and improving behind it, and hundreds of thousands of soaps made.
There's no magic and no secret ingredient. There's a craft backed by science, and science backed by hands.
A chemist in the soap workshop
Lucka studied environmental chemistry, and you can tell from the way MuSK creates its products. Not in a sterile or academic way, but in the precision with which she thinks about recipes. When she puts something in, she knows why. And when she leaves something out, she knows why too.
For us, chemistry has never been a necessary evil to hide behind the flowers on the label. It's a natural part of soap making and also the reason we know what's going on during it. Soap is made from oils and lye through saponification, and behind this seemingly simple process lie the right ratios, temperatures, precision and time.
Mydláreň u slečny Kaplánovej
MuSK isn't a random abbreviation or a word dreamt up by a marketing department. It stands for Mydláreň u slečny Kaplánovej (Miss Kaplánová's Soap Workshop), and the name has been with us from the very beginning.
And while we're on the subject of the name, there's one thing we should finally clear up.
MuSK is pronounced “musk”, not “mask” – like Elon Musk. That's more or less where the similarity between us and Elon ends. He has rockets and Mars; we have soaps and Prievidza. We each have our own universe.
In the new visual identity, the letters SK have been given more room. Miss Kaplánová is still in them, but they also naturally point to Slovakia – where MuSK was born and where we still make its products today. After all, a Slovak soap doesn't need to pretend it comes from somewhere else in the world to be good.
The new logo and the whole visual identity are the work of Maťko Gross from the Monokel studio. He didn't rewrite the original MuSK story; he recast it in a form that far better reflects what the brand has grown into over the years.
What we stand for
Why a new look
A lot changes over that much time. MuSK grew; new recipes, products and experience came along, and we gradually reached the point where the way the brand looked on the outside no longer quite matched what it had become in the meantime.
So along came a new logo, new soap designs and finally a new website – the one you're reading these lines on. But we weren't just after nicer packaging. We wanted to bring more order to the range and, above all, to explain better what we make, what we make it from and why each product looks and works the way it does.
That's why, for each of them, you'll find more information about the composition, the raw materials used and their role in the recipe. We don't want you to have to trust us just because we write “natural”, “handmade” or “honest” on the packaging.
A soap you understand is better than a soap you have to trust.
The range grew along with us
Soaps were there at the start and they're still the heart of MuSK today. Over the years, though, other products have naturally grown up around them – shampoo bars and conditioners, essential oils and hydrosols, body butters and oil serums.
The range expanded gradually, in the same way the brand itself came about. Not according to what happened to be popular, but according to what made sense to make or offer and what we can stand behind.
More products are almost finished. We'll introduce them the moment they're ready.
What changed along the way. And what stayed.
The first wedding soaps in 2015 were made by the hot process, but over time we switched to the cold process. That's what we stuck with, and today it's the basis of how we make our soaps. It calls for a precise recipe, control of the process and, above all, time that simply can't be skipped.
So freshly cut soap doesn't go straight into a box. It goes onto a shelf, where it cures for several weeks, gradually losing water and hardening. Only when it's ready does it get its packaging and move on. This process can't be sped up by a new logo, a prettier box or an impatient glance at the calendar.
The making itself is still done by hand. We make, cut and finish our soaps by hand, so no two pieces ever look exactly the same. Small differences in shape, pattern or shade aren't a production fault but a natural part of craft production. Every bar passes through several pairs of hands before it reaches yours.
The way we think about raw materials hasn't changed either. We've been palm-oil-free from the start, and with the other ingredients what interests us most is what they do in the recipe and whether they belong there. A nice-looking ingredient list doesn't automatically make a good product.
And then there are the names. From the start, we didn't want our soaps to be just another lavender, citrus or rose in the line-up. So every recipe gets its own unique name, based on its character, scent, look or story. Some are gentle, some playful and some take a few more liberties. For us, the name is simply part of the product, just like its scent, colour or recipe.
Because the name is, in the end, the last ingredient we add.
Our soap in a nutshell
| Composition | Only natural ingredients your skin can get the most from — understandable even without a dictionary |
|---|---|
| Raw materials | We choose them with great care and with the environment in mind |
| Suppliers | They go through our strict checks too |
| Palm oil | None — no palm kernel oil and no animal fats either |
| For vegans | Almost half of the soaps in our range have 100% plant-based ingredients |
| Production | By hand, in small batches, by the cold process |
| Curing | At least 30 days, longer for some types |
| Packaging | A box made from recycled paper |
Every soap is hand-cut — not perfectly identical. And that's how it should be.
New face, old school
Since that wedding, MuSK has changed enough to need a new face, but not so much that we'd have to change the essence it grew from.
The logo, packaging and website are new. What stays is the way we think about recipes, choose raw materials and make our products. What stays is the handwork, the time that can't be skipped and the belief that rather than big words on a label, it's better to say what's really in a product and why.
We look different, but we still do things our own way, as always.
Frequently asked questions
What does the name MuSK mean and how is it pronounced?
MuSK stands for Mydláreň u slečny Kaplánovej (Miss Kaplánová's Soap Workshop) and is pronounced “musk”, not “mask” – just like Elon Musk. That's more or less where the similarity ends, though. Today the letters SK carry a double meaning: Miss Kaplánová and Slovakia, where we develop and make our products. The name has been with us from the start; only the way we write it is new.
When was MuSK founded?
Lucka made her first soaps in 2015 for the guests at a friend's wedding. Back then she still used the hot process. That one favour gradually led to more requests and the first orders, and a year later the MuSK brand grew out of them. Today we have more than ten years of making, testing and refining behind us.
Has the composition of the soaps changed with the new design?
No. The logo, packaging and website have a new look, not the soaps inside. We still make them by the cold process, cut them by hand and leave them to cure for at least 30 days, and longer depending on the recipe.
Where are MuSK soaps made?
We develop and make all our soaps in our own soap workshop in Prievidza, Slovakia. They're made in small batches and we cut every bar by hand, so you'll find small differences in design, shape or pattern between them. The same recipe, but no two bars exactly alike.
Do MuSK soaps contain palm oil?
No. We've never used palm oil in our soaps, right from the start. We build our recipes from other plant oils and fats depending on the properties we want in the finished soap – from hardness and lather to how it feels in use.
Who is behind MuSK's new visual identity?
MuSK's new logo and visual identity were designed by Martin Gross from the Monokel studio. The brand's story stayed where it was, but it was given a visual form that better reflects what MuSK is today.
We look different. We do things our own way.
Hand-cut soaps in a new design — see for yourself.
Browse our soaps