About
Our Story
Fiat Luxe is an artisanal felted soap and textile design company located in the heart of Sonoma County’s wine country. Owner and artist Nancy Rosenthal’s inspiration stems from her lifelong love for nature’s beauty and an early childhood memory of a delicate—but surprisingly sturdy—cocoon flickering with the promise of life within. A lover of all things handmade, Nancy creates beauty with layers of color, texture, and fiber using only the highest quality materials.
Fiat Luxe’s journey began in the Rosenthal family’s country kitchen in 1996, after Nancy was gifted one tiny handmade bar of oatmeal soap. Nancy and her husband, Arthur, were inspired to make their first batches of soap, and gifted the unevenly-cut chunks to family and friends. As time went on, they refined the art of blending essential oils to create custom fragrances for their soaps and brought their creations to local farmers markets and gift fairs. Eventually, Nancy decided to combine her love for soapmaking with her love of color and texture by wrapping soap in wool to create her signature felted soap—a soap and washcloth all-in-one!
Our Name
The name, Fiat Luxe—let there be light—is inspired by the ever-present flickering of life and luminescence forming behind the fibrous veil of a chrysalis—Nancy’s first memory as a child. She’s inspired by nature's ability to display stunning beauty and strives to emulate that beauty through her fiber art.
Our Process
From the beginning, Fiat Luxe made a commitment to use only natural ingredients, sourced locally (as much as possible), and does not use cheap, synthetic fragrances. All soaps are scented with botanically-derived essential oils only, added generously so you may experience the aromas down to the last sliver.
Fiat Luxe’s cold-process soap is made in small batches by stirring melted vegetable oils into a lye solution until thick. The solution is then poured into molds and left to rest undisturbed for a few days before hand-cutting the partially-cured soap into bars. The bars of soap are then cured in ventilated trays for three to four weeks before they are ready for felting.