u/USS-SpongeBob's SOTDs for challenge 'Feats of Fragrance 2023'

2023-07-01 Lather Games SOTD - 🍁🍁🍁CANADA DAY EDITION🍁🍁🍁

• Brush: SHAVE⭐DANDY St Vincent (26x55mm AP Shave Co SynBad Synth) #FAUXFUR
• Razor: Wolfman WR1 #CNC
• Blade: Lord Classic (Green box)
• Lather: Mäurer & Wirtz - Sir Irisch Moos Shave Stick
• Post Shave: Aqua Velva - Original Sport
• Fragrance: Alfred Sung - Sung Homme

I've been on the lookout for a stick of SIM to call my own since /u/RuggerRigger introduced me to the stuff in 2019, so I was pretty excited when /u/J33pGuy13 got his hands on an entire box of NOS shave sticks and sold one to me for a very reasonable price. (Edit: as mentioned in the comment below, SIM was already on its way out so RuRi didn't want to spare any for me to sample, but he did let me huff his shave stick. Wink wink.)

Performance was pretty good; secondary slickness would have been better if they upped the glycerin a little. Scent is a classic fern up front in the style of Fougère Royale. Using FR as a reference point, I would say SIM is generally smoother and more mellow. The citruses and spices still brighten it up and highlight the freshness of the greenery, but it isn't as harsh as something like Reserve Fern or Fougère Trois. And the drydown? Much rounder, softer... not as weedy / powdery as FR. While I was unable to stomach more than a few shaves each of Reserve Fern and Trois, I can definitely see myself eventually using up this whole shave stick.

For the rest of today's shave I took the date into consideration and decided to go all-Canadian (aside from the blade), and by sheer coincidence the only Canadian aftershave and fragrance I own are absolutely perfect olfactory counterparts to the Moos. AV Original Sport is only available up here in Canada and I have no idea why, because I feel like it would sell just as well in other countries; its opening is very much like the drydown of Irisch Moos + some fruity citrus (less sparkle, more juice) and the drydown is mossy and woody, like a little brother to Polo Green sans its ash tray of cigarette butts. And then Sung Homme? Even more of the same vein of smooth-mossy-green-soap character.

Yessir, very satisfied with this Moos. What a gloriously early-80s-smelling Canada Day this is shaping up to be.

My only regert today is that Sung Homme isn't coloured green to match the other products, so I took some liberties in Photoshop for my SOTD photo.

P.S. Sorry fellow judges, I will try to keep future SOTDs shorter than this. I ain't aiming for any #FOF prizes this year, I promise.

2023-07-04 Lather Games SOTD

• Brush: Yaqi Rainbow (26x55 Synthetic)
• Razor: Gillette Tech (1947-1950 English fat handle) #BRASSING #REGUS
• Blade: Permasharp (13)
• Lather: Summer Break Soaps - Field Day
• Post Shave: Stirling Soap Co. - Bonafide
• Fragrance: Christian Dior - Dior Homme Eau for Men

Field Day meets every technical requirement for today's spring theme, but it's also exactly what my garden smells like on a fresh spring day after a good downpour... rainbow in the sky, irises blooming like mad and filling the garden with their luscious aroma, a hint of damp earth and ozone in the air... It's one of the most legit "this smells like it's supposed to smell" "nature" shave soaps I've ever experienced.

Followed it up with more irises via a Prada L'Homme dupe aftershave and some legit actual Dior Homme Eau, courtesy of /u/dganjo who bought too many bottles of it when it was discontinued and sold me one of his backups. :)

Hashtag #fof for wally.

2023-07-05 Lather Games SOTD

• Brush: Omega 11126 (24x55mm Boar) #OLDWORLD
• Razor: Generic Mach III
• Blade: Generic Mach III (21)
• Lather: Nivea - Protect & Care Shave Cream
• Post Shave: Nivea - Protect & Care Aftershave
• Fragrance: Nautica - Voyage

I worked at the Shopper's Drug Mart down the street from my house years ago while I was in University. I still have bad dreams about it. And the intercom music was brutally repetitive... the featured playlist in today's thread topic is a recreation of pretty much every song they've included in their rotation over the last 20+ years. That job ruined a lot of songs for me.

Anyway, everything I used today came from that store. The chain actually has a pretty decent shave selection - usually some Proraso stuff, lots of Nivea, some variety of "10000-series" Omega boar brush (the model they stock changes from time to time), a few commercial safety razors and maybe a shavette some days... Decent for a huge Canadian pharmacy chain. They also have a cosmetics department with a medium-sized designer perfume collection, so I went with a bottle of Voyage I got for $20 on sale a few years back.

Also, everything except the brush is blue or decorated with blue trim, including the Chinese rice bowl I used as a lather bowl today.

Daily Challenge:

What would be in my perfect original shaving scent if I were the one making it? So far it's Colonia Nove, but I'm tinkering a bit here and there with some new ideas. Right now I'm mulling over a scent that I'll probably call "SandalwOud Spice"... I have a few pre-blended FOs that I really like that I think will blend nicely. It would go something like: Sandalwood (phony; woody-creamy character), Oudh (phony; dusty-earthy-woody character), Patchouli (real), Exaltolide, some phony leathery nuances, and a bit of a waaaaay-off-the-mark Old Spice dupe FO that just comes off vaguely woody-spicy without any of the detail of the original stuff, but nevertheless smells nice on its own merit.

#FOF because apparently wally cares about that or something

2023-07-07 Lather Games SOTD

• Brush: Semogue 2015 HD (22x55mm "High Density" "Finest" Badger) #SHD
• Razor: Wolfman WR1
• Blade: Lord Classic (2)
• Lather: Barrister and Mann - Bay Rum
• Post Shave: Old Spice - Original
• Fragrance: Chatillon Lux - Horsefeather

/u/jeffm54321 and /u/cowzilla3 - today's theme (and my shave today) are dedicated to you guys. No joke. I know you two love your bay rums and old spices.

Anyway

Last summer my brother in law had some really excellently scented beard balm and he said it was "bay rum." I was a bit incredulous because I had smelled Stirling's bay rum in the past and there was absolutely no resemblance whatsoever, but I thought to myself - "Maybe Stirling's is just way spicier than the norm?" So I decided to try some bay rums when I got back from the cabin and asked jeffm54321 for suggestions because I know he's the local expert. Barrister and Mann's version was his top recommendation at the time. I ordered it along with a few other samples and when they showed up...

Nope. They smelled exactly how I expected a bay rum would smell based on my prior experience with Stirling - spicy as all get-out. So spicy that I never actually got around to trying any of them and today was my first go with bay rum since probably 2020. I'm pretty sure my brother in law's beard balm was just some bullshit poorly named pre-blended scent or something. Wish I could find out what that artisan was using so I could buy it and dump it into some soap of my own. It smelled excellent and not-bay-rummy-at-all. I'd probably call it "Emerald Leather" or something like that.

Anyway, #fof for wally:

Today my shave is wicked spicy and my wife is going to hate me. Bay rum soap, an old 1997 pre-plastic-bottle of Old Spice, and my 2019 Feats of Fragrance grand prize Horsefeather, which is based on the mixed drink that bears its name. (See the article on pages 15-20 of the Wetshavers Digest e-zine linked above for a more in-depth review.) "Scent Notes" could be as simple as: lemon, bitters, ginger beer, whiskey; or they could be as expansive as: lemon, saffron, anise, cardamom, ginger, oak, caramel, coumarin, vanilla, honey, lactones, etc. All depends what decade you're targeting with your marketing materials.

Challenge: Other Hobbies?

My hobbies could be broadly summed up as "I enjoy making stuff." Guitars, analog audio electronics, and knit/crotchet items form the bulk of my corporeal creative outputs, and "playing music" would be the largest part of my non-tangible creative outputs. Right now I have two sweaters, three electric guitars, one bass guitar, two acoustic guitars, four guitar pedals, and a new desk all in progress at various levels of completion ranging from "so far I've only drawn up the plans" to "I just need to finish painting this dang thing."

I would say the guitar-stuff-building communities are at least as weird as ours with the split between builders who methodically and scientifically experiment with their designs and make un-biased decisions based on proper double-blind tests, and the builders who believe every weird piece of hype they read on the internet (like "this brand of electronic component sounds different than this brand" even though they're physically identical and would have to break the laws of physics to create the kind of sonic differences they claim to hear). Very similar vibe as when you compare simple but effective soap formulas like Stirling or Catie's new base to something with a million trendy ingredients like, say, A&E K2e or whatever new soup Mo is stewing up.

2023-07-14 Lather Games SOTD

• Brush: SHAVE⭐DANDY St Vincent (26x55mm Synth)
• Razor: Feather Artist Club SS
• Blade: Kai Captain Mild ProTouch MG (12)
• Pre-Shave: Proraso - Crema pre Barba (Rinfrescante conolio di eucalipto e mentolo)
• Lather: Proraso - Sapone da Barba (Rinfrescante conolio di eucalipto e mentolo)
• Post Shave: Mennen - Skin Bracer
• Fragrance: Paco Rabanne - XS

Proraso's original product was pre-shave cream - 1947 or 48 I think? Commercial soap wasn't great in those days. It was designed to add glycerin and potassium stearate to your choice of soap to make the lather more stable, creamy, and slick - all those things we look for in a good shave soap. And then when they released their shave soap the following year, it was formulated to be used in conjunction with that pre-shave cream. Modernized preservatives, fragrances, and chelating agents aside, both products are... more or less the same today as they were 75 years ago.

Modern shave soaps, on the other hand, are already formulated with healthy doses of stearic acid and glycerin, making Proraso's pre-shave creams a little pointless if you're already using modern soap. But that's not what I'm doing today, is it?

Today's ~~heavily~~ thoroughly mentholated shave was actually pretty slick. Good shave. Crema and Sapone together with a synthetic brush (almost a perfect color match for Proraso Green (the color)) works about as well for me as most late-2010s artisanal soap bases. My only complaint is that this pre-shave smells Weird. I don't know if it's something in the fragrance that the soap's base funk covers up, or if it's something weird in the pre-shave formula that adds an unpleasant element to the fragrance, but I'm not a fan of the scent.

Anyway: chilly pre-shave, chilly soap, and chilly aftershave (with EXTRA menthol added to it, just like old man NeedsMoreMenthol taught me years ago)... I was even going to wear some BRUT because it's one of the only perfumes I know that includes straight up menthol in its formula, but I needed to save it for later in the month so instead I went with XS, the fragrance that Creed ~~ripped off~~ definitely didn't ever smell before they released their "mountaineering-inspired" Himalaya. I was underwhelmed the first time I tried it because it's so linear, subtle, and almost insubstantial in some ways, but I've come to appreciate it over time - it's like wearing fresh alpine air on a late winter/early spring day with snow melting off the trees and little streams running down the rocks. #fof for wally.