Let me get this out at the beginning. I suck at shaving, I’m no good at it. Part of the reason is a lack of practice. Why do I have lack of practice? Because as a man-child, I cannot grow facial hair on a schedule that men do. Unlike my buddy Greezy who needs to shave about every 30 minutes, I can generally go two days, and sometimes three, without shaving. This is just fine with me, as in general its a time consuming exercise. A necessary one, but still time consuming. (A situation that can probably improve with added practice, but bringing that up makes this paragraph circular.)
Due to my infrequency of shaving, when I buy shaving supplies they last somewhere around 5 to 6 years. I just hit that magic time where I needed to re-up.
Like many, I laughed when The Onion mocked the practice of adding more and more blades to a razor. Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades is a classic article, or rather, would have been a classic piece of comedy if it wasn’t in fact prophecy. Yes, enter the Gillette Fusion which made 5 blades a reality. Now, for most people, this is old news, and to me it is as well.
Since it was time to rebuy, I thought I’d give the whole 5 blade thing a try. I have to say, its the closest/best shave I’ve ever had. It makes me feel like a shaving pro without any required effort on my part. Its strange I find myself gushing about a razor, but its that much of an improvement on my shaving. I don’t even have the Fusion with the vibrator build in, just the regular old blade. I’ve had the vibrating one is even better, but my face doesn’t need pleasure while I’m shaving.
So, yeah, I’m a product loving dork.
I looked up the price of the cartridges on drugstore.com (versus the price of the mach 3 cartridges). Holy shit, they’re 50% more expensive!
But, I guess, if you gotta have the BEST, that is probably it.
Well, they do have 66% more blades. So its a steal!
As a woman who enjoys a man who shaves closely as much as I enjoy shopping, I must point out that spending 50% more to get 66% more is what we women call “a bargain”. As in, “honey, I saved us so much money because I got it ON SALE!”
Just to show how dedicated I am to pleasurable shaving:
1. I use a Merkur Futur (I trust your Googling abilities).
2. I highly recommend Truefitt & Hill’s pre-shave oil, and Taylor of Old Bond Street’s “Eton College” shaving cream.
3. I prefer “Feather” blades and, believe it or not, Nivea for Men’s after-shave balm.
Love it.
-MattL
The best razor and holder I ever had was single-edged “injector”, and it had a dial to change blade angle. It was given to me (already used and probably ten years old at that time) by my dad when I was thirteen and I used that thing for fifteen years. I was always able to find a drugstores that had the injector blade packs. For different parts of the face different dial settings were optimum; those changed slightly as a blade wore. The anodizing became too thing on the handle and head and the thing suddenly turned into a rusty relic seemingly overnight.
Now I use the disposable Mach-3 type, they’re actually better than the cartridge ones because of the flexibility of the holders and the blades last longer!