L’Occitane CADE Shaving Cream can be used with or without a brush, according to the package and the web site. In my last two shaves I used it as part of a superlather with its sister product, the puck of Shave Soap in its nickel-steel tin. The results were outstanding as I wrote previously. But a superlather doesn’t tell you much about each product individually, so today I used the shaving cream by itself. I loaded up a good sized dollop into the Plisson European White badger brush and proceeded to do….nothing! No lather emerged as I scrubbed the brush onto my face. I thought, “Maybe the cream flew out of the brush”, so loaded another big squeeze into the brush. Still nothing but the faintest lather! I managed one awful pass, relathered and tried for a second…but it was not to be…the razor skipped and jumped across my face, threatening to do a Sweeny Todd. In desperation, I used the CADE shaving oil for the third pass with a pretty good result…considering.
I’m now convinced that the CADE Shaving Cream is intended to be applied by hand rather than a brush, and that it is ideally suited to the Fusion style of razor where a thick lather would likely clog up the works. But here’s the kicker….the cream is fantastic when combined with the l’Occitane soap in a superlather, producing an incredible lather that is much better than the soap by itself! Go figure.
