Who is the world's oldest maker of....

De Vergulde Hand is probably the world's oldest shave soap maker. They've been making it for over 450 years.

Pear's is the earliest shave stick manufacturer, and the formula remained unchanged until 1992. It used to be a fantastic soap.

Shave brushes are a little trickier. Simpson's has been around much earlier than 1919, but that was when the company was 'officially' started. Rooney lost most of their records in a fire in the early 1800's, but the family was known to have been brushmakers in Ireland in the 1700's. Kent was originally a collection of shops on Kent St., known as brushmaker's lane. If you were a brushmaker in London, chances were you were on Kent St. The name of the road has since changed, but Kent remains.

 

Houbigant's Fougère Royale is both the world's oldest Fougère scent (1882) and the father of the Fougère class of fragrances. It was also the first fragrance to include a synthetic fragrance, synthesized coumarin, which was 10% of Fougère Royale's formula. It was discontinued, re-introduced, discontinued, and re-introduced yet again. The Fougère Royale shaving soap has sadly been discontinued permanently.

The triad of scents used in Fougères form the basis of the classic barbershop scent: Lavender, Oakmoss, and Coumarin.

The oldest continually produced shaving cream is Palmolive. Palmolive tried 160 different formulas before choosing the current one, in about 1924.

The oldest 'modern' shave cream is Colgate in 1918, who was also the first to package shaving cream in tubes.

Barbasol made the first latherless shave cream.

The oldest cologne is Farina's Eau de Cologne, first produced in 1709. It is still produced according to the original formula by Farina. It is the oldest continually produced cologne, and has been made in the world's oldest perfume factory since...1709.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farina_gegenüber

In 1806, Jean Marie Joseph Farina, a grand-grand-nephew of Giovanni Maria Farina(1685–1766), opened a perfumery business in Paris that was later sold to Roger & Gallet. That company now owns the rights to Eau de Cologne extra vieille in contrast to the Original Eau de Cologne from Cologne.

4711 is almost as old, and has also been continually produced since the 1700's.

 

I actually hate it when people post threads like this. The last one ended up with me finding and starting to produce a shaving cream from an 1869 recipe.

This thread has me waiting on a vintage and modern bottle of the Original Farina Eau de Cologne, 'Kölnisch Wasser.' I'm looking forward to trying a 300+ year old fragrance formula.

Original bottle (used until the early 1800's):


Vintage bottle:


Not so vintage bottle:


I'm also waiting on a bottle of Farina Russian Leather, which if not the oldest version of Russian Leather, is within spitting distance...1750 or earlier. (That's for the formula, the bottle is much later, though still vintage.)

If I like it, I'll refill it from a modern bottle.

 

I bought a vintage bottle of Farina's Russian Leather too.

But does it come in a cool looking bottle?