American Crew's Moisturising Shave Cream

Sat, 29 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +1300

Yanno how I said it’s hard to find American Crew aftershave? Well my better half went out yesterday and found a place in lil’old Te Awamutu that sells their shaving range: Team Seven, beside Viands. She bought me a bottle of my favourite “Post-Shave Cooling Lotion” (oh my god that name), but also got me a tube of their “Moisturising Shave Cream” to try. For shiggles.

Clearly, American Crew are better at chemical formulation than they are at coming up with names. But I digress.

Whelp I whipped out my trusty DE89, popped in a fresh Derby Extra blade, soaked my shaving brush and gave it a go.

Firstly - no. This is absolutely not made for a shaving brush. It’s hand-application all the way. It’s also not really a foam like what I’m used to - it’s very much a cream style, and it’s quite stubborn about remaining a cream, thankyouverymuch. In contrast, my Proraso or TOBS creams froth up quite heartily when I whip them with a brush, but this really resisted that.

Okay so, without making it frothy, it definitely takes more product to shave. I’m going to say double, but it might even be more. At about $32 a tube, that is definitely verging out of my price range. 2/10 on price for this.

The feeling, however, was really divine. There’s not a whole lot of scent, but there’s significant menthol action going on here, and it really gave me a refreshing zing that dwindled on my face through the shave and rinse. Delight rating 7/10.

Efficacy - this is hard for me to judge, since I was using a brush and thus really didn’t have enough on there for my second pass. So I kinda mucked up my shave, but it was much more my fault than the cream’s. Aside from that it left a beautiful coating of light avocado oil and aloe on my skin, meaning even though I under-catered on the product, I didn’t entirely munge up my face. For this, I’m giving it a decent 7/10 on efficacy. (See update below, though)

These ratings seem kinda low, but honestly this is going to be my favourite shave cream through the summer, with that nice refreshing menthol coolness. However with the price and sheer quantity needed for a good shave, I expect I’ll gravitate back to my Proraso creams once this is gone.

Update 2018-12-31: I’ve had another shave today without the brush, and just applying the cream directly to my skin. Definitely a better result, but once again I under-catered on the second pass and got myself some irritation happening. It’s certainly going to be at least double what I previously used. However once again my face feels actually quite good, and geez the menthol is nice.

Since I’ve under-catered twice now, and both times I’ve actually still had a decent shave, I think I need to upgrade this to 8/10 efficacy.

Proraso Azur Lime aftershave balm

Fri, 28 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +1300

Gather around, children, and I’ll regale you with a tale of tonight’s shaving.

My go-to razor setup at the moment is my Edwin Jagger DE89, with Derby Extra blades. But that’s not new.

You might remember that my favourite aftershave is American Crew’s “Post Shave Cooling Lotion”. I’ve been using this almost exclusively for about 5 years now, and I love it. It’s wonderfully soothing, and it’s a fairly thin balm so it’s easy to avoid overly-thick application. It’s also not as thin as a milk (such as “The Standard”, by The Gentlemen’s Refinery), which has a tendency to run through your fingers on the way to your face, not entirely unlike… milk.

Unfortunately American Crew’s aftershave can be really difficult to find. So I popped a question to the team at FineShave, and Frank gave me some insight into what he uses. This spurred me to try the Proraso Aftershave line, and today I took delivery of a bottle of Azur Lime.

This is a really, really nice aftershave. Again, it’s a balm (I don’t have any splash-type aftershaves yet). It’s a little thicker than the American Crew that I’m used to, but still not thick.

WOW does it cover a lot of distance. I used three, maybe four drops worth and it covered my whole face. This 100ml bottle is going to last forever, but it’s still a bit pricey at $35, which makes me give it a 6/10 on the price scale.

It’s a light citrusy scent, with a little bit of mint, and a slightly musky underbelly. It smells nice, but the scent wears off fairly quickly, so probably a 7/10 for scent.

I also happened to give myself a spectacularly awful shave, which this aftershave has completely addressed - no discomfort or ‘hot areas’, and only a little redness in the mirror. I think that’s a 10/10 for effectiveness.

All in all, this is a serious contender for my new favourite, and I expect I’ll buy another bottle when it’s done! Recommended.

Shaving on Such geek. Wow.

American Crew's Moisturising Shave Cream

Proraso Azur Lime aftershave balm