I had planned a really luxurious shave day, with my Cristalo unscented shave stick (and I mean unscented – I glued my beezer to the the top of this thing and couldn’t detect any scent whatsoever!) mated to T&H’s 1805 (probably the most incredible fragrance ever invented – YMMV) for a brilliant superlather. But it was not to be. The mailman delivered my eagerly-awaited package from eBarbershop.com, containing among other things, a couple of tubes of Made-in-America Palmolive Brushless Shave Cream. Since I have an upcoming business trip I was eager to try the Palmolive (and also because I just love Palmolive products – must be the Greek affinity for anything with olive oil!). Brushless you say? It can’t be! But yes Virginia, I have found that gourmet shaving is somewhat incompatible with travel – for me – a topic I will write about in a near-future post. Given this change of plan I decided to move into “quickie” mode – commercial shampoo and body wash (Ugh!), MR GLO, Palmolive Brushless, and the Slant-bar with a fresh Sputnik blade. The Palmolive package instructs you to wash the face with soap twice – but to not rinse off the second dose of soap – shades of superlather Batman!

The first thing that struck me about the Palmolive Brushless is the smell – very synthetic and “chemically”. The second thing was the noticeable burning sensation – now, I don’t have sensitive skin and can basically shave with Tide laundry detergent in a pinch – but this stuff hurt! I shaved quickly so I could rinse it off after each pass. The third thing I noticed was that I needed to put more cream on my face after two pases because there wasn’t enough left in my hand, despite a generous chargement (showing off my French!), and care to not rinse it off my hand. Thanks to good technique, an outstanding blade from Mother Russia, and the as-always brilliant Merkur, I managed a really nice shave and in record time. Nevertheless, there are much better brushless products out there, including Cremo Cream, and Musgo Real shave cream (which can be used both ways). Unfortunately, in this US-Russian cold-war, America did not fare as well as in reality, and I say Niet to the Palmolive Brushless!! YMMV.