Beards Make Us Look Older

When we were underage in high school, we always got our prematurely hirsute classmates to buy beer because their five o’clock shadows made them look older. Stubble made an 18 year old less likely to get asked for I.D. (or at least made a fake I.D. more believable). Having said that, teens nowadays are getting away with underage drinking much more easily without beards, due to the believability and realistic look of Arizona Fake Id. Despite this, for adults, I think the same beard principle applies.

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A New Lathering Shave Cream from Dollar Shave Club

I’ve never been a fan of non-lathering shave creams. I like the old-fashioned lathering experience with my shave. As a fan (and member) of Dollar Shave Club, I was excited when they introduced Dr. Carver’s Shave Butter, but ultimately disappointed when I discovered that it was the non-lathering type. There’s nothing wrong with non-lathering shave creams, but they’re just not my personal preference.

Naturally, when a tube of Pillowy Shave Lather arrived from Dollar Shave Club, I was eager to try it.

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A Truman Shaving Set from Harry’s

Let’s face it: no one is going to reinvent the way we shave. At least on any real scale in our lifetime. Most of us use a cartridge razor with (hopefully) good blades and a soothing shave cream that keeps the whole operation running smoothly. The only real shaving disruption over the past few years has to do with changes in the cost and the delivery system.

When Mike Dubin, founder of Dollar Shave Club, released and starred in what is possibly the most hilarious and virally successful video in product launch history, the revolution began. We were no longer hostages in a dysfunctional model that entailed ugly and over-produced razors, $20 for five cartridges, or wasteful plastic disposables.

Since Dollar Shave Club launched in March of 2012, there have been other contestants in the direct-to-consumer shaving game. Even behemoth Gillette has succumbed to the threat by offering a subscription model with their razors that look like props from Robocop (the 1987 one). But perhaps the most stylish and streamlined player to date is Harry’s.

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Something New (and Something Renewed) from Bulldog Skincare

Founded in 2006 and launched stateside in 2011, Bulldog Skincare for Men is an award-winning ethical men’s skincare line from the U.K. Using effective natural ingredients, the products are never tested on animals and they never use ingredients from animal sources. I’ve been a fan of Bulldog Skincare for years now, using the Original Face Wash, the Anti-Ageing Moisturiser and the Original Eye Roll-On in my daily skin regime. Each week, I add the Original Face Scrub into the mix.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Bulldog’s founder Simon Duffy on his recent visit to New York. He was in town to claim yet another award for the brand and wanted to share some news about the re-formulated Face Scrub and the brand new Protective Moisturiser…

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Best Barber, a New Tip-Top Barbershop in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC

Hell’s Kitchen has a lot of barbershops. Most of these barbershops are designed with an unfortunate formula that includes bad lighting, ill-considered furnishings and a front window showcasing photos that look like grooming images from an International Male catalog. A guy who is sensitive to his surroundings and looking for a good and fairly priced haircut in a handsome, masculine and tasteful setting would be challenged to find a positive experience in Midtown West. Until now.

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When They Kill Your Fragrance

In late 1993, when I was still living in Boston, I was avoiding the rain by strolling through the mall at Copley Place. At the time, Crabtree & Evelyn had a store there, into which I meandered to mindlessly peruse the men’s grooming offerings to kill time. After whiffing a couple that didn’t grab me, my nose was struck by a cologne unlike any I had ever smelled.

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The Skin Game

Every five minutes, it seems there’s another men’s skin product that professes to be better than the one that came out five minutes before, promising to solve a problem that has already been solved by several products that came before it (but with way cooler packaging, of course). And every twenty minutes, I get an email from a PR person wanting me to write about one of these revolutionary new products that’s going to change shaving and skincare as we know it. It’s a saturated market that can be confusing to even the most educated consumer.

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