Men-ü Shave Crème

After that horrific shaving experience (no, I’m not talking man-scaping gone wrong) with Clarins Men Rasage Ideal Smooth Shave a few weeks ago and at least 24 hours of an itchy, blotchy face and neck the opportunity to try Men-ü Shave Crème was very welcome. 

Me being me I launched the packaging (read threw the packaging in the direction of the bin) and was just about to dive straight in until I realised that this usually leads to much swearing, stamping of my feet and generally being a grumpy git when I have to accept that I should read the directions. I’m glad I took the time to read them, as I got the chance to use my shaving brush again - even though it‘s as good just rubbing between your palms and applying using your hands (it’s the little, inane things in life that make me smile the most).

Beardage pre shave.....quite long and thick hair.....

The brush is back....boom boom....

This is what Men-ü say about the shave crème over at their website:

‘Takes you to a whole new level of shaving. Includes tea tree oil (a natural antiseptic and antibacterial) that helps protect from spots and shaving rash. Packed with lubricants including silicone and moisturisers, and provides optimum slip without drying the skin. Less resistance, less irritation and less nicks mean a longer lasting blade! 

With a fresh mint & menthol fragrance, can be used with or without a shaving brush. 

Many foams and gels generate too aerated a lather. What is in contact with skin & beard matters, all else is wasted! With men-ü shave crème you see where you have shaved and the crème breaks down upon contact with water, so will not clog multi blade razors.’

As directed, I washed my face off, wet the brush and used two squirts from the pump dispenser. It covered about half of my face. Yes, I have a big face (the first person to say I look like a horse gets punched) but two squirts of the crème was just not enough. Based upon the recommended amount you should be able to get 165 shaves out of this 100ml tube of the shave crème. In my experience, I had to pump four squirts to get proper coverage of the beardage as you can see from the photograph.

Even despite this, 80 shaves from a 100ml tube costing £10.95 from Mankind here to me doesn’t seem that expensive, especially when you consider that the massive costs for blokes when shaving lies with the cost of blades (you should check out Razor Brite and their blade cleaning kits if you want your cartridges to last longer).

So, the lather, it’s immense, not too thick and it explodes from the crème as soon as any pressure is applied. Personally I prefer using a shaving brush to distribute this across my face, it’s far more even and helps once shaving starts as you can see the bits that have been done.

Using the shave crème again this morning to get a better feel for it I have to say it wasn’t as great as the first time I used it. That said however, it still had lots of things going for it. While the lather did clog the blades in my razor (this in fairness could have been due to the fact that my beard was quite thick) the fragrance, ease of shave and finish on my skin were exceptional. 

You can really smell the mint and tea tree, two of my favourite scents and like all things, if it smells good you are going to continually be drawn to it. While strong, the fragrances don’t linger on the skin once any excess lather has been washed from the face. Like all good grooming products, you don’t want it to be too strong, so that it alters the fragrance of any aftershave or cologne.

Post shave and no irritation.....bonus!

The marketing claims that it provides optimum slip are spot on. A fresh blade glides across the face and even with a thick beard being removed it seems to come off effortlessly. No snags, no swearing and what’s that, no bleeding - result.

After washing off the excess lather and drying my face I was impressed. As directed I used the Skin Refresher gel (again from Men-ü) and let it soak in. Wow, hours after shaving and my face feels baby soft, no signs of irritation and no blotches, not a dot. At this point and if I lacked self respect I would probably dance a little jig.

It’s cost effective, it smells great and it does exactly what it says on the tin. You can’t ask for much more than that. The fact that I hate shaving and fear the break outs afterwards means that a product like this is fantastic, and a very welcome addition to my ever growing collection of shave crème. 

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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Clarins Men Rasage Ideal Smooth Shave

Shaving is the bane of my life, I‘m not constantly craving that lumbersexual look and to be honest shaving ranks as one of the largest thorns in my side when it comes to attempting to make my face look respectable. Sometimes I can go weeks without shaving until the resulting beard starts to itch - at that point out comes the razor, and to avoid a shaving rash out come lots of products to choose and use (look how I made that rhyme….). 

Today I will be giving my thoughts on Clarins Men Rasage Ideal Smooth Shave, something that came in my Selfridges&Co male grooming box back in June. Yes, it has been sat around that long!

To put it quite simply (as I’m a simple kind of guy), I have been using a whole host of shaving gels and creams over the years as a kind of bathroom pre-emptive strike against the botchy red rash on my neck that I used to get when shaving.  

Taylor of Old Bond Street Coconut Luxury Shaving Cream, Erasmic Lather Shave Cream and Gillette Fusion Proglide Shaving Gel are all favourites that have helped put pay to that rash in the past but fancying a change I decided to try out Clarins. 

A foaming gel, ISS as it shall now be referred to (not ISIS) has a lovely fragrance, clean and fresh as you would expect but it is highly perfumed, almost floral. I love it, its much better than the synthetic fragrances you can get with other shave products.

Even though this is supposed to be a gel when you dispense it is comes out in a combination of gel and foam form and this is where it starts to go down hill. Quite a lot of the gel is needed to cover my face - yes, it may be a large face but it felt like I had used nearly half of the 50ml can. That wasn’t a particularly pleasing development but worse was to come…. 

The lather, if you can call it that is watery and runny, not rich at all and a bloody nightmare - as soon as it was on my face the lather started to deteriorate immediately, soaking in way too much to the point that I couldn‘t tell where I had applied it to my face. You would think that this would make shavng easy and the build up on the razor less - WRONG. 

Even with short stubble the gel/lather mix (whatever you want to call it) acts like a natural barrier between the blades of the razor which meant vigorous cleaning in between strokes down my face. It took twice as long to shave and time shaving is not my idea of fun.

My skin felt hydrated in fairness to ISS, but have soft and smooth cheeks does not forgive the fact that an hour after shaving the dreaded red blotches started, and the stayed for two hours. Nothing would clam it down. 

I won’t be finishing the can…..

NOT RECOMMENDED

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