I've been on a pretty epic run of sampling all kinds of different products and wanted to share my thoughts on a few creams in case people find it useful. I'll lead with the punchline and say that baum.be is hands down my favorite cream among a number of high end creams I've been using, some of which are many times more expensive. Scent and slickness are good, and protection and post shave feel are great. I got BBS yesterday (with another soap) and my technique this morning (using baum.be) was a little sloppy. So, recent very close shave plus re-hitting spots many times in clean up today were a recipe for irritation... but I had none.
Here are some assorted thoughts on other creams I sampled with my favorites first. I won't be adding any of these to my den, but I definitely would not recommend against them either.
Santa Maria Novella - great performer. Really nice scent which I'd say is close to Proraso green but with the SMN tobacco toscano fragrance (tobacco and vanilla) in there as well. I'm a huge fan of their tobacco toscano scent and own the edt. I just wish I got more of that and less of the mentholated Proraso green. I already own green cream for about $10 and RazoRock Santa Maria del Fiore croap for $20. The RazoRock is truer to the tobacco toscano scent and a very good performer. SMN is a fantastic product, but I just don't feel the need to spend $70 when I feel like I have this kind of covered with stuff I already own.
XPEC - I always get very good shaves with this, but I'm not paying $60 for an unscented cream and I strongly dislike the original scent.
Castle Forbes lime and lavender - both good performers but I'm not nuts about the scents and the performance didn't wow me like it does for some.
Boellis Panama - this is the new cream, not the Panama 1924 soap. The soap is almond scented. This cream is the same scent as the Boellis Panama edt which is like a more grown up version of Jean Paul Gualtier le Male edt if that means anything. I own and really like the edt, and I think the scent is even better in a shaving product than as a cologne. But it just didn't perform that well. Their soap performs great. If I could get the performance of the soap and the scent of this cream I would fork over the money for it in a heart beat. Oh well.
You can find full reviews of any of the above elsewhere on B&B. Wasn't trying to really break down performance of these individual products so much as give baum.be and SMN a shout out and then add a frame of reference. Oh and I got most or all of the samples from shavedash. It's a European website with a lot of samples you can't get stateside. Prices were pretty reasonable, and the dollar is strong right now. They'll also cell you sections of cella brick which is nice if you don't want to commit to the full thing.
Here are some assorted thoughts on other creams I sampled with my favorites first. I won't be adding any of these to my den, but I definitely would not recommend against them either.
Santa Maria Novella - great performer. Really nice scent which I'd say is close to Proraso green but with the SMN tobacco toscano fragrance (tobacco and vanilla) in there as well. I'm a huge fan of their tobacco toscano scent and own the edt. I just wish I got more of that and less of the mentholated Proraso green. I already own green cream for about $10 and RazoRock Santa Maria del Fiore croap for $20. The RazoRock is truer to the tobacco toscano scent and a very good performer. SMN is a fantastic product, but I just don't feel the need to spend $70 when I feel like I have this kind of covered with stuff I already own.
XPEC - I always get very good shaves with this, but I'm not paying $60 for an unscented cream and I strongly dislike the original scent.
Castle Forbes lime and lavender - both good performers but I'm not nuts about the scents and the performance didn't wow me like it does for some.
Boellis Panama - this is the new cream, not the Panama 1924 soap. The soap is almond scented. This cream is the same scent as the Boellis Panama edt which is like a more grown up version of Jean Paul Gualtier le Male edt if that means anything. I own and really like the edt, and I think the scent is even better in a shaving product than as a cologne. But it just didn't perform that well. Their soap performs great. If I could get the performance of the soap and the scent of this cream I would fork over the money for it in a heart beat. Oh well.
You can find full reviews of any of the above elsewhere on B&B. Wasn't trying to really break down performance of these individual products so much as give baum.be and SMN a shout out and then add a frame of reference. Oh and I got most or all of the samples from shavedash. It's a European website with a lot of samples you can't get stateside. Prices were pretty reasonable, and the dollar is strong right now. They'll also cell you sections of cella brick which is nice if you don't want to commit to the full thing.
