May they bring you bliss!
I am currently on a Barbasol kick as part of a blade project. It eliminates the variables of humidity on soap puck, water mineral content, soap ratio, and brush and lather technique. Reviews of gear and the subsequent evaluation takes on true objective meaning only in isolation.
How Barbasol got into the mix...there was a dare to shave with a CJB salon handle and Barbasol, it went down on the Ides of March. I am grateful the usual suspects didn't say WILLIAMS! That would have been cruel, as well as dangerous. Barbasol does add a safety factor for learning straights. It doesn't dry on the face very quickly, leaving the user with dry hands for most all of the shave.
Barbasol turned my notions upside down. Honestly, in terms of sheer performance, with a straight, Barbasol is better than most small batch/artisan soaps, and competes with mass market powerhouses like Proraso (Italy), La Toja (Spain), and Arko (Turkey) on that criteria alone. Canned goo is probably undeserving of its poor reputation. If evaluated in terms of per shave cost combined with consistency and performance, canned foam like Barbasol is as good as anything. If we're talking about DE shaves, I am shave soap all the way, as canned goo would clog most razor heads with my low angle technique.
A common gripe about canned foam is that it's "not natural." The word natural, on its face, conveys no indication of anything other than "not synthetic." Crude oil is "all natural," for example. So is Radon and snake venom. Natural can be simply a marketing ploy to convince a consumer that a tiny kitchen soap operation somewhere, selling through a web page, can compete in terms of performance and safety, with soap made by companies that have six floors of chemists working on perfecting soap.
My real thoughts on shave soap...the best shaves I've ever had were with Schick G/straights/shavettes and Route 66 or Arko. Route 66 is an artisan soap, Arko is used by Turkish barbers. 2015 was the year of the soap review thread, and I used to have SAD really really really bad. Like get the cold eye from Mrs. Samurai kind of bad. I am a cold water shaver, face latherer of shave sticks often, stunt shaving aficionado, and alum and old school barber AS junkie. Brush choice is generally L'Occitane Plisson synthetic(gen 3 fibers). I am not afraid to admit...Barbasol is pretty good stuff.
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