Kiehl's "Close Shavers' Squadron Ultimate Brushless Shave Cream"

If you are a part of the population that shaves regularly, this is a mouthful that's worth comitting to memory: Kiehl's "Close Shavers' Squadron Ultimate Brushless Shave Cream". Long name, but worth the effort. Hard to find and a touch expensive, but still well worth the effort.

This is going to sound strange, but using Kiehl's actually makes shaving enjoyable. I'm not kidding. It's what every shave cream / lotion / lather / foam wishes it was and sometimes promises but fails.

The first time I used it, it was a strange and slightly weird experience. It is not like any other shaving, uhm, ... spread ... that I've ever used. For starters, it doesn't lather up or foam. It sort of just spreads around. You can try to foam it up if you want, but you're wasting your time and, worse, you're wasting the Kiehl's! If you're used to using a foaming style of shave cream then this is a quite mysterious thing. How is it supposed to hold up the little hairs so that they can be shaved?

But when it spreads around, oh my. It has a sort of tingle that is simultaneously warm and cool, soothing and astringent. It says on the (very wordy) package that it is "spiked with menthol and camphor" and I guess that's the trick. They could add "yin and yang" to the already long name. You can almost feel the hairs on your cheeks start to stand up.

That's a very nice thing; the whiskers on your face stand up. At attention. Ready to be shorn smooth! As you spread the cream around your face you actually feel the whiskers stand up under your fingers. Strangely you also feel your fingers get kind of dull feeling. Like there's some menthol or minty something that's making the first layer of skin a little numbish.

That's ok, because they also feel slick and your face feels even slicker. (And coool. And waaarrmmm. and ... ok, ok.) Hairs are standing up stiff and ready to be shaved, face is slick and smooth. You can see where this is going, right. You bring your razor over and the blade just finds it's own natural glide over your face and the skin left in it's path is smooth as it was after your very first shave. That's nice.

Kiehl's "Close Shavers' Squadron Ultimate Brushless Shave Cream". It works. Oh my, it works.