Brushless shaving cream

In an earlier article I explained how I bought some brushless shaving cream at T K Maxx, due to my own stupidity and lack of attention. Well, when you have a lemon you make lemonade, so I thought I would get at least a shave and an article out of it.

Proper shaving cream is a fairly concentrated soap. An almond sized piece is enough for a shave. Add a bit of water and a brush and this lathers up for four passes easily. Brushless soap is, quite obviously, nothing like this. Basically it is slime that you put on your face. It does not lather up or foam in any way. So you have to use a lot more of it.

Once I got my face covered with this slime I realised that it formed an impressive barrier to any razor, so I reached for my 1956 Gillette Red Tip Super Speed, an aggressive razor with a fairly fresh Iridium blade in it. If anything could cut through the slime then this legendary beast could. And it didn’t. The Red Tip was totally tamed. It felt like there was a thin sheet of invisible but impenetrable polythene between the razor and my face. After two and a half passes it was as good a shave as I was going to get. And it wasn’t very good.

When or for whom is this brushless shaving cream any use:

  • If global warming wipes out all the world’s badgers. And boars. And horses.
  • If you are so hungover that you don’t really know where your face is.
  • For shaving more sensitive parts of your body than your face.
  • When a total novice real shaver is given a slant bar to use.
  • If your children want to shave your pet dog. Or cat. Or goldfish.
  • When you have to do a complete three pass shave in 30 seconds.
  • Give it to someone you really don’t like but are forced to buy a present for.
  • If you have no option but to to shave in the pitch black dark.
  • When the only blade you have to shave with is a shard of broken glass.
  • If you buy it by mistake at T K Maxx.

So, basically, don’t make the same mistake that I did. There are very good reasons that we use a shaving brush.