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Is This the Golden Age of Wet Shaving?

steveclarkus

Goose Poop Connoisseur
The Golden Age ended when Cartridge razors became the norm. Cartridge razors became more popular when Gillette and Schick showed stores how much more profitable Carts are and slowly eliminating sale of choices of razors, soaps, blades, etc.
Back in the day in 1961, I went to the drug store to buy my first set up with my Dad and on the counter was a small case filled with razor blade tucks and Ads with Rodger Marris and Ted Williams posters on the walls and in shelves.
No disrespect meant to those who feel this is the Golden Age, but my Grandfathers, Father and I grew up in the Golden Age of Shaving. Manny of us seniors here saw it's end.
Do you remember when the annual baseball book came with Gillette razors? My sister bought dad a new razor every year to get that book.
 
Do you remember when the annual baseball book came with Gillette razors? My sister bought dad a new razor every year to get that book.
Don't remember any that came with my razor in '61, went into service few years later. We got our dad a fatboy razor a few years earlier and none came with it.
 
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steveclarkus

Goose Poop Connoisseur
I just read an article on Dovo and their sales have gone from nearly folding to large back orders in a very few years - they mfg straight razors.
 
Indeed. Nobody in the classical "golden age" of shaving, when Milton Berle had a tv show and Americans with Buicks and Fannie Farmer cookbooks pretended to be impressed by Sputnik, had a "display" of multiple razors dangling from test tube racks on custom shelving.

Perhaps we live in "The Gilded Age of Shaving"?

I remember my mother and I went out in our backyard to watch Sputnik fly by. We used to watch Milton Berle and Phyllis Diller.

Remember bathroom sinks had hot and cold water, but not through the same faucet?

My father's shaving den was in his Old Spice cup.
 

steveclarkus

Goose Poop Connoisseur
I remember my mother and I went out in our backyard to watch Sputnik fly by. We used to watch Milton Berle and Phyllis Diller.

Remember bathroom sinks had hot and cold water, but not through the same faucet?

My father's shaving den was in his Old Spice cup.
I remember watching Sputnik. We lived in the mount and it was very dark at night. I had forgotten it until you mentioned it - thanks.
 
No because the vasty majority of people still shave with a multiblade cart or disposable and foam in a can. IMO, the golden age was in the '50s or '60s when everyone still used DEs.
Nowdays, DEs are a hobbyist razor; not the norm and traditional wet shaving products are a fraction of a percent of the shaving market.
 
I think it is up to us to maintain the traditional manufacturer of DE technology. A lot of companies are emerging, which certainly brings quality plagiarisms and their intention is just to mine dollars. None of them had come up with anything before. I will support traditional manufacturers, despite the fact that I like the new shavers.
 
I think it is up to us to maintain the traditional manufacturer of DE technology. A lot of companies are emerging, which certainly brings quality plagiarisms and their intention is just to mine dollars. None of them had come up with anything before. I will support traditional manufacturers, despite the fact that I like the new shavers.
I'm curious: How do you define "traditional manufacturers"?
 

Chandu

I Waxed The Badger.
I don't think so. 1900 - 1925 would be where I'd put it. Since then it's been incremental improvement and in some cases outright disimprovement. For instance no one has built a better injector format razor than Eversharp and Schick though many have tried and made a heavier more expensive razor that didn't shave as well as what came before. The same can be said of most Gem format razors as well.
 
It's an interesting idea, this golden age. It doesn't stop with shaving products either. In motorcycles, older styles of motorcycle (think Triumphs, Indian's latest morph, everybody's scrambler/cafe racers, enduros, etc.) are seeing an equal resurgence. Those earlier mentioned muscle cars are breathing new life (I have one in Charger flavor). In mirrorless cameras, Olympus's workhorse line is a scale model of a DSLR. Panasonic sports a familiar viewfinder style. And there are new vinyl records being released today. Look around for more examples, these were the easy ones I could think of.

There seems to be an interest in, how to put this, a recently lost time? We sit here in 2020 discussing essentially WWII era methodology and tech. Updated, to be sure. Alloys improve, EFI is better than carbs without taking much, chips can help with focus and speed. But my grandfather, an aircraft mechanic stationed in England in The Big One, can recognize shaving with my razor, riding my bike, use my camera in M, and listen to The Stones.

I'm not really sure why that is though. For razors, it was cost 115% that drove me to DEs. It hit me like a brick wrapped in barbed wire. 12 Mach 3 blades were $45. I put them back and went to AoS. There I spent $30 more and got a razor, 10 blades, brush, stand, soap, and bowl. So far, since around last Thanksgiving, the math works like this. 12 weeks is 12 carts, or $45 plus a can of foam. So $47. That's what I would have spent. Instead I spent $85. Around New Year's the 10 pack ran out so I got a sampler pack from Amazon with 50 blades for $10. If that keeps up, in 12 more weeks the AoS trip will have paid for itself. After 6 months I'm making money not using carts.

Something else to consider. Someone said it's a golden age of shopping. That's true. Something interesting is that the internet destroyed the small boutique brick and mortar stores. But it gave the businesses a much broader market. The cottage industry took an interesting turn, didn't it? For those who would rather support small businesses, it's literally never been easier.

TL;DR version, I wouldn't say golden age. It's more riding the nostalgia train.
 

Chandu

I Waxed The Badger.
My father's shaving den was in his Old Spice cup.
Same for my dad. It must have broken somewhere along the line because the last he had was a Surrey mug and brush.

IMO, the golden age was in the '50s or '60s when everyone still used DEs.
There was plenty of brushless creams and canned foam being used then. It was seen as more modern and a step forward from brushes.
 
I agree it is a great time to for enthusiasts. It seems like over the last decade, the amount of products available have grown exponentially. Candidly, I wonder how much that has to do with and increase in demand and furthermore I wonder how much of that has be driven by art of shaving stores. I’m 30 and a decade ago when art of shaving opened in the local mall, I didn’t even know what people used before carts. I know that’s silly, but it’s all I had seen in my generation. I also would rely on videos from the likes of nick shaves to explore technique and products. Several other youtubers have come to my attention over the last decade as well which have further educated me on new offerings. There is one aspect from yesteryear that really helped me get into the hobby. B&B used to have much more product specific dialogue prior to the consolidation of these threads. These really helped me when trying to find the best products to experiment with in a college students budget. I feel the consolidation of those threads and the lack of an alternative does a slight bit of harm, but what do I know I’m just a doctor.

I don't know if it's due to the consolidation of threads, but I agree that there used to be more product-specific threads five or six years ago. I miss those days. We still have threads about the soap-of-the-moment, but when was the last time we saw a Pashana aftershave thread, or a Stone Cottage shaving cream thread?
 
I don't know if it's due to the consolidation of threads, but I agree that there used to be more product-specific threads five or six years ago. I miss those days. We still have threads about the soap-of-the-moment, but when was the last time we saw a Pashana aftershave thread, or a Stone Cottage shaving cream thread?
Maybe its a result of some artisans pricing themselves out of the price range of a lot of people. I mean, how many people can honestly justify spending $200+ on a razor, $100+ on a brush and $30+ on a soap or aftershave?
I mean, I recent sold my Timeless and my ATT on Ebay and it was quite stupid what people paid for them. I sold the Timeless for what I paid for it when it was new and I made money on the ATT because I bought it on a Black Friday deal.
 

Chandu

I Waxed The Badger.
They might be overpriced, but the Gillette SkinGuard provides one damn fine shave for me when I travel. And can we really talk overpriced with some of the acquisition disorders we brag on hereabouts? I'm sure many of us would have been better off financially to have stayed with carts.

I feel like for every wet shaving minimalist that does save money there are about 20 people that went in the complete opposite direction. I mean, who is on a Fusion waitlist, or waiting for the next drop of Gillette Pure?
 
They might be overpriced, but the Gillette SkinGuard provides one damn fine shave for me when I travel. And can we really talk overpriced with some of the acquisition disorders we brag on hereabouts? I'm sure many of us would have been better off financially to have stayed with carts.

I feel like for every wet shaving minimalist that does save money there are about 20 people that went in the complete opposite direction. I mean, who is on a Fusion waitlist, or waiting for the next drop of Gillette Pure?

Yeah that's the thing, isn't it? You can just as easily go broke chasing artisanal soaps, highest end razors and brushes. My point was you don't have to. And we are talking about this on an enthusiast's website.
 
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