June 5, 2024
DIFFICULT LOVE: THE ADVENTURE OF A WET SHAVER
(theme: Canned Shave Goop)
photocontest - Hobbies (Movies)
Prep: shower with Mario Fissi 1937 Firenze - Royal Musk soap
- Brush: Proraso (Omega rebranded) - Professional Brush - Boar #OLDWORLD
- Razor: Bic - Monolama disposable
- Blade: Bic - Monolama - integrated blade (1)
- Lather: Mario Fissi 1937 Firenze - Crema da barba rinfrescante
- Post Shave: Denim - Musk Aftershave
- Fragrance: Denim - Musk EdT
A long and busy day, I am posting late and I apologize for the decreasing quality of my English.
Happy to have involved my GF, who helped me with today's pic's set dressing by making the paper wedding arch and the stylized yellow bus.
Let's jump into today's story about the difficult love life of mass market products in a world dominated by plastic and multi-blades.
BIC = BEN'S INNER CONFLICT: A STORY ABOUT DIFFICULT LOVE IN THE TIME OF SUPERMARKETS
-> click here for the real story of the Graduate
SPECIAL CHALLENGE: REVERSE LATHER ROUTINE
As I usually shift between Bowl- and Face- lathering, I decided to subvert my routine and reclaim my shaving destiny by taking it into my hands.
This was my second time using Mario Fissi's Crema da barba rinfrescante, a puzzling product that presents itself as a hard soap (in a commendably recycled cardboard box), while being labeled as a "cream".
During my previous shave with it, I scraped some of the dry soap and put it in a bowl to try to lather with a brush.
This time, I energetically rubbed the soap bar with my own two hands so as to cover them with its oily and alnost sticky proto-cream, then I used the Proraso Professional boar brush (Eur 3.73 at the same supermarket where I purchased the Fissi Crema da barba) to lather it frommy hands.
The resulting foam was (same as last time) full of bubbles and not particularly reassuring. On the other hand, the shaving experience with the humble Bic 1-blade disposable (Eur 1.18 for a pack of ten) was incredibly effective, and THE POST-SHAVE WAS AS GOOD AS WITH MOST TOP ARTISAN SOAPS. Seriously, this is uncanny.
I feel vastly unequipped to decode this cheap soap from a mass-market company I had never heard about until a few weeks ago. I'll need to further investigate the mystery of this "cream" that appears as a solid bar, makes a very ugly lather, and then performs way beyond its league. Very happy to have used just my hands and the most no-BS boar brush I could find, to get the most "hands on" experience (literally) I could conceive.
After the intense palm lathering (one palm for each one of the two passes), a side effect is that my hands benefitted from the moisturizing properties of the soap, returning to a state of softness that reminds me of my pre-adult life.
FOF WRITEUP
Today's products were all selected on the base of their availability as mass-produced goods that are available at local supermarkets here in Florence, Italy, so the pairing options were limited from the start.
I started with a pre-shave shower with Fissi's soap bar "Royal Musk", a nice citrus/green/musk accord, and then used the Floid Vetyver Deodorant Stick, which provided a generic but pleasant, consistent and persistent citrus/green accord.
The lather was nominally featuring Vetiver and Lemongrass essential oils: while I could smell them both from the hard soap bar, once lathered they were almost non-perceivable from my nose.
After many decades wondering what is the scent of "The man who don't have to ask, ever", I used today's LG theme as an excuse to finally find out the truth about the legendary Denim Musk.
The AS alcohol splash, available at least three different supermarket chains, cost me Eur 3.90.
The EdT, available only at one of the three stores I scouted, cost Eur 6.49.
While lacking any functional properties beyond, well, being alcohol-based, the AS splash punches waaay above its weight, offering a clean citrus/green/musk accord, with a short but impeccable evolution from the bright top notes to the surprisingly nuanced synthetic musks.
The EdT tries to add some woody/spicy complexity to the drydown, with a result that ends up being so bland and generic that it's almost unnoticeable (yet, luckily, not annoying) to my nose.
The Mario Fissi Royal Musk soap bar combined with its Vetiver and Lemongrass Crema da barba sibling, and Denim Musk AS provide a seamless and excellent pairing: for a cumulative price of less than 10 Euros, it's possibly the most affordable good scent pairing I ever experienced.
On the other hand, the Denim Musk EdT is ok, but I'd rather apply more AS (which has a decent staying power, and a less brooding scent), than buy again the EdT, which had the counter-productive effect of covering the citrus/green and musk duality with an underwhelming woody spiciness.
FOF
ROTY