Zum Zum
When I first started with a shave brush, I had the classic Van Der Hagen shaving mug and the hockey puck-shaped bar of soap. From a cursory google of sites, it’s obvious I’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of testing out shaving soaps. This is very good. The search is part of the pleasure of a great hot shave @ home and the destination is NOT finding the ultimate soap for the smoothest shave. The journey is the destination.
I have to tell you though, that Indigo Wild was a marvelous discovery along the way. It came about as I was trying to find a cream for my dried out feet, of course. I was on a road trip with my mother, driving the fingers of Michigan having taken the high-speed ferry from Milwaukee to Muskegon to start it all off. We stopped at a Whole Foods store near Traverse City, I believe, and came across Frankincense & Myrrh Zum Rub. I liked the idea of F&M and once I opened the hockey puck-shaped tin,* I became mildly obsessed with the fragrance. BTW, it worked well on my feet.
When I couldn’t find a refill/replacement at the local Whole Foods, I
- began to wonder if it really was a Whole Foods store in Michigan that we’d visited
- went to the Web
I discovered a really primitive Website; not the one you see now. I also found a distributor’s Website with cheaper prices and not only ordered more Rub but got Soap and Mist, as well. I had it in the back of my mind to try the soap with my shaving brush. I was not disappointed!
You can probably get a decent lather using a brush and any soap, but this was pretty nice. Zum soap is goat milk based. They really haven’t worked out a shaving cream yet, though they have exploited just about every other aspect of their product if you get a copy of their wacky catalog. They’ve also improved their Website a great deal unless you find their hyperbolic catalog copy a bit over the top but that had been a feature when the site wasn’t as sophisticated.
I’ve begun exploring other IW soaps and scents: Dragonblood, a new one, is quite nice.
Here are the usual pictures of the lather.
You can see it has bubbles, but it feels great.
Shaving soaps probably allow you to have the hottest application than creams or foams, since the bar is warmer and you can dip the brush back into the hot water. The main thing about soaps is that they tend to lose their “lather” more quickly, although your face remains slick for the razor long enough to get the job done.
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*Hmmm, “hockey puck-shaped” occurs twice in this blog …
