There is a very interesting thread going on at my favourite shaving forum right now; people discussing the positive and negative changes and development in the wet shaving community over the last decade or so.
Well worth a read – I suggest y’all head over there and look at the thread.
I found this picture online… but if you loose it in the forest you’ll be lucky to find it again.
I’m currently travelling for work, and Phil of BullGoose sent me a care package that’ll make my travels a lot more comfortable and enjoyable.
I knew that Phil is an all round Good Guy™ in addition to being a purveyor in bespoke shave gear, on top of being the man behind of my favourite shave forum. Based on the box I received, I have now reached the conclusion that Phil is in fact downright an Awesome Guy™.
I knew Phil wanted to send me a brush, from an artisan he considered taking into his store but for various reasons it didn’t pan out despite the brushes being highly regarded. I knew Phil said he would include some Asylum brand shaving soap, some aftershave and “a few other things to fill the package”. Phil’s idea of package filler simply blew me away… in a good way.
So what did I get in the box from Phil?
Yeah.. blown away is a major understatement, and calling it a major understatement is a major understatement as well…
Some first impressions:
So a big Thank You to Phil, for his amazing generosity and for making my travels so much better.
1) Per etymology 2; targeted at serious, enthusiastic consumers, incorporating professional features.
Work is sending me on a long course far, far away.. so I figured I should be ready if I found a nice restroom during my almost eight hour layover (my job buys the cheapest tickets):
From the left: A sample-sized cologne, a sample-sized face moisturiser, one of my old BodyShop Synthetics, a disposable BiC Sensitive, what is left of my Lea shave stick, and a sample-sized Lea after-shave balsam (already half used up) – all packed in a see through plastic toiletry bag, ready to be checked by security at the airport.
When our grandfathers shaved, they used the razor, blades, soap, and brush they could get in their local area. Perhaps they had a choice, perhaps there was just one to pick from. They would use it until they ran out of blades or scraped the last of the soap out of the bowl, and then go back to the same store and buy the same thing again. Efficient, but hardly exciting – even if the products probably were undeniable better than the canned foam and multi blade cartridge razors most stores stock today.
These days many of us live in a place where traditional shaving supplies are near impossible to get in local stores – the products have been squeezed out by the Big Name Multinationals multi blade cartridge system and pressurised dry foam in cans. The downside of that is not only that many of our friends and fellow men don’t know the joy of a good shave, but also that we must turn to the Internet to buy what we need for our daily ritual. And the upside of that is that we’re no longer restricted to the brands – or even brand, singular – that our local stores carry… the shaving products of the whole wide world is now ours to buy. The selection is staggering, and finding the right one is a daunting task for a newly converted wetshaver – from what I have seen in online discussion forums, it can be a daunting task even for those old hands who never succumbed to the lure of the multi-blade razors in the first place.
We’re lucky enough to live in a time when the whole world is easily – almost too easily – accessible from the comfort of our homes: anyone with an internet connection can within minutes find other people across the world who are passionate about the same things – in our case that thing is traditional wetshaving. We can to our hearts content discuss the finer points of making lather, or nitty-gritty details on how one brush compares to another. And – and this is where the danger of hoarding starts raising it’s head – you can easily be moved by glowing reviews of shaving products you never heard of before… be it brands from a different continent or something someone has lovingly crafted by hand on their kitchen counter.
Something else happened at (very) roughly the same time as the multi blade razors were pushed onto the marked: there was the growing realization (or perhaps the re-realization) that men – us big, burly, manly men – should be allowed, or even encouraged to be a little vain. Care about our looks a little further than checking for holes in our pants and scraping the stubble off with a bayonet… it is not without reason that the ads for the early multi blade razors emphasised the smoothness of the shave and how much the girls would like it. Suddenly boys growing into men were told that it was okay to use that nice smelling soap, rub some lotion into the cheeks and, y’know – smarten up a bit. Gets you a bit more positive attention from the girls too – or the boys, if you’re tastes run that way. Your Mileage May vary, as it does with so many things in shaving and life.
As mentioned, we live in an age of global commerce. Checking out that barbershop in Turkey is just as easy as checking that one in downtown Houston – even if you happen to live in Norway. And the almost scary part is that it’s all easy to place and order and have it shipped straight to your door. No more slugging barefoot through snowdrifts higher than your own head to buy a sorry piece of soap at the drugstore (uphill both ways off course, not that the youth of today would believe it), no more having to make do with the same old blade. Instead we can order new soap and new blades from anywhere we like, and while we’re at it we might well put that cream the guys at the forum were raving about in the basket… oh, and lets pick up a yet another sampler pack of blades as well…and that brush that I didn’t pick up last time…
The result? The box the poor postman has to drag through the snowdrifts (barefoot, uphill, etc) seems pretty huge when you finally receives it, and the contents can barely be fitted into your shave nook. And where did that new razor come from? The mysteries of online shopping is never more impenetrable than when you’re unpacking.
Exposed to fellow shavers and tempting shops online, it’s easy for a hoard to grow out of all reasonable proportions. Our forefathers are a testament to the fact that we don’t really need four razors, five brushes and seven different soaps and creams in order to shave – but it is nice to to be able to mix and match, try something new, select just the right fragrance before we go out and face the world. We can embrace our manliness by picking something that smells of the great outdoors, or get ready to woo the girl (or boy) in our life with a light rose scent… the only limits is the sky and the size of your cupboard. And that is why I have gotten to rather enjoy my Acquision Disorders; while it does cost me a bit of money (but not much more than buying into the latest fad from the Big Name Multinationals would cost) it gives me much pleasure – not just in the morning spa-experience that a good shave is, but also throughout the day – every day.
Embrace your hoard. Reconquer the bathroom and fill it with products that both you and your partner in life will enjoy. Celebrate your ability to be a manly man with clear skin and a pleasant fragrance. Revel in your Acquision Disorders – but don’t spend more than you can afford. And Pay It Forward or sell to a fellow wetshaver when you happens to find something in your stash that you can’t understand why you got in the first place – after all, that makes room for more new supplies!
A few years ago Brian Krampert – the man who makes one of my favourite aftershaves – posted an in depth history of the Valet Autostrop; a razor I consider to have one of the more steam-punky looks of them all.
If you haven’t read it already, I strongly recommend going and doing it now – it’s a very interesting read.
There are a couple of things about this hobby that ticks me off… the big one is not unique to wetshaving; shilling. Not to point fingers or mention names, but there is a couple of vendors who either condones or outright encourages shilling – which is bad enough when they use it to shill their own products, but worse when they use it to talk down, belittle or attack the products of others.
Okay, a little back story: A little while ago a new razor manufacturer popped onto the scene, offering something as uncommon (but not unheard of) as a fully machined Titanium razor. Not as cheap as most razors at just shy of 400, but not expensive either all things considered.
For those who don’t know, machining Ti is… well, difficult don’t quite cover it. It requires skill, longer time to machine, frequent replacement of cutting tools, and so on. It’s notoriously hard on tools due it’s high strength, elasticity, and poor thermal conductivity. An online source I trust points out that a lot of shops won’t machine titanium because of the high costs and wear on tooling. So not only is the base metal costlier than more common materials like steel or aluminium (not to mention zamak and potmetals), but it’s also costlier to turn into a complex shape like a razor head – not to mention a tapered, hexagonal razor handle with engraved chevrons. If you also factor in that the razor is manufactured in a first world nation where you’ll have to pay your machinist a decent wage, 400 frankly sound downright sensible – it’s not far from razors such as the OneBlade, which have gotten near universal acclaim.
I personally have some minor experience in forming, shaping and drilling Ti in sheet form, and even the simple work I did required a whole day (and a fresh piece of sheet metal after I bungled the first). The skill and patience to actually machine it is beyond me – and I strongly suspect beyond most people.
Which is part of the reason why quite frankly got quite pissed when I decided to look for some information on the Paradigm in order to make a tiny blurb on the blog about how someone was making a razor the hard way – as mentioned machining Ti is hard – and found something else on the first page of the search result.
Lets have a look shall we?
For those that see but don’t see it: Multiple threads across multiple forums, all started by users with different usernames – but with pretty much the exact same title and identical punctuation? Add to that the factoid that all the thread starters attack the prize of the razor, yet none states to have tried it.
I don’t know about you, but to me something smells more than a little off… it’s pretty much the exact pattern you’ll see when someone is shilling, but used to attack a very interesting razor (sadly outside my budget) and a brand new manufacturer.
As a fellow shaver and gentleman stated in one of those threads: “For some people , Titanium is not worth the price that is being asked for these days and for others would be their objects of desire.” Does the fact that you don’t want to pay the asking price for a razor mean that you’ll have to try to talk it down? I don’t see many people shit-talking the price of a Porce claiming that it shouldn’t cost that much to make, nor many scooter drivers shit-talking Harley-Daveson for selling expensive motorcycles.
Overall one have to wonder why there seem to be a drive to talk down a new, promising manufacturer who choose the difficult way to break into the market. Did Paradigm steal some ones thunder by releasing a Ti razor? Is someone out there feeling a bit of pressure and want to get rid of competition? Or is it plain pettiness? Hard to say, but either way it’s not a gentlemanly thing to do.
People makes me angry at times. This is one of those times.
…a shaving brush in the wild – at Europris no less. While TGR is, in my opinion, the fun kind of dollar store, Europris is more of a.. how to put.. Norwegian version of the American chain Big Lots.
Quality brush they claim.. so much quality they couldn’t even get the print centred. Even so, this along with the set spotted at TGR earlier this week, makes me wonder if affordable traditional wetshaving for the masses are coming to Norway – or it might just be a blip on the radar.
I find weird things on the web some times:
I can understand why you might want to shave a corpse – if you’re doing an open casket funeral, that is – and a razor cut would be most unflattering. So a niche product for a niche marked, but quite possible a forerunner for todays depilatory cream?