Really despise shaving, but have maintained the habit of remaining clean shaven.
On a Saturday evening in September of 1969 I was given my dad's Gillette Fatboy (was not was not nicknamed the Fatboy back then) he'd discarded for a Norelco electric a few years before, and told to shave the peach fuzz above my lip before church Sunday morning. No real instructions other than to lather up the Lifebuoy soap for the job. Such was my adolescent introduction to shaving.
I endured that Fatboy for over a decade. I had no clue about the blade height adjustment. I just set it on "6" because that was my favorite number. Finally, in 1980 after lots of nicks and weepers, I gleefully tossed the Fatboy into the back of a bathroom drawer in favor of the Gillette Trac II with canned cream and never looked back.
Electric razors never worked for me. Inefficient and ineffective they are.
By 2010, I was using Gillette Fusion cartridge blades and fussing about the cost of the things. Our eldest son had embraced double-edge razor shaving and promoted that as an alternative. I wasn't having it for a while, feeling like I've been there and done that, but gave in and gave the double-edge razor another shot at shaving. Had much better results after a bit of familiarization.
I'm devoted to vintage Gillette razors with the occasional vintage Schick Krona thrown in for good measure. C. O. Bigelow shave cream and good ol' Williams shave soap share lathering duties. Feather, along with a hoarded supply of obsolete Gillette Spoilers for special occasions, are the blades of choice.
This 1930s Gillette Aristocrat is the most used razor. Makes a person feel like Cary Grant, Clark Gable, or Gary Cooper to use it. I generally use the collected razors in rotation. It's a week of the Aristocrat and then a week of which ever other vintage Gillette in the collection gets the nod. All the major Gillette models and variants since 1904 have been gathered in over the years and are stowed in an antique glass front medicine cabinet in the bathroom. The razors and shave ritual are a bit of whimsy and provide a measure of fun in what is otherwise a daily drudgery.
My eldest son and I spent an afternoon a few years back re-crafting three vintage Ever Ready brushes, outfitting them with silvertip badger knots. Since then one of the two Ever Ready C40s has been the daily shave brush for me.
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