Shaving for Your Skin Type

Your face is not a uniform surface, and treating it as one is why you bleed.

The piece argues for the double-edge safety razor over the cartridge, explains proper lather, and addresses three skin types: oily, dry, and sensitive.

The skin on your cheeks differs from the skin on your neck, which differs again from that patch beneath your nose where the grain shifts direction as though placed there by a hostile cartographer. Some areas are oily, some are dry, and some, by some perversity of design, contrive to be both at once. A man who drags a blade at the same angle across the entirety of his face, expecting a civilised result, has confused optimism with method; the two have never met socially, and they are not about to begin on your account.

One must address the instrument. If you are shaving with a cartridge razor, that plastic contraption with four or five blades stacked like a tiny, overpriced picket fence, you have been misled by decades of marketing into believing that more blades produce a closer shave. They do not. What they produce is more passes over the same skin, more irritation, and a recurring expense that borders on extortion. The proper instrument is a double-edge safety razor: a single blade held at the correct angle by a weighted handle that does most of the thinking for you, provided you let it. The initial cost is modest; the replacement blades cost next to nothing. The shave, once you have spent a week learning the angle, is superior to anything a cartridge has ever delivered.

If your skin is oily, a proper pre-shave wash with warm water and a gentle cleanser does more than any shaving product to prepare the surface. The oil on your skin is not a lubricant; it is an obstacle. Remove it first, then build your lather.

The lather itself demands a word, because what most men call lather is nothing of the sort. That aerosol foam, consistency of whipped topping, dries the skin and provides no real cushion for the blade. A proper lather is built with a brush, badger hair being traditional, and a quality shaving soap or cream, worked in a bowl or directly on the face until it achieves a dense, glossy consistency that tells you the blade will travel as it should. The difference, once you have experienced it, is not subtle.

If your skin is dry, you need moisture before the blade arrives. A hot towel held to the face for thirty seconds is not an affectation; it is preparation, softening the whiskers and opening the pores in a manner that no aerosol foam has ever accomplished. Follow the towel with brush-built lather, rich with glycerin, and the razor passes with a smoothness that repays the extra minute tenfold.

For sensitive skin, the direction of the grain is not optional. Shave with the grain on the first pass, letting the weight of the safety razor do the work rather than pressing down, which is the cardinal error of the beginner. If you require a closer result, re-lather and shave across the grain. Shaving against the grain is for men who enjoy ingrown hairs and the appearance of having been recently stung by something vindictive.

Rinse with cold water when you are finished. Apply a balm, not an aftershave that contains alcohol, which is a punishment disguised as a product. Your skin has just had a blade drawn across it with deliberate care; the appropriate response is to soothe it, not to set it alight.