Art of Shaving products

What is your opinion on fine shaving creams and hard soaps? Do you like Trumpers, Coates, Taylors, Truefitt & Hill? Post your reviews and opinions here!
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gruffydd63
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Art of Shaving products

Post by gruffydd63 »

Art of Shaving is going to be opening a store in a mall near me in the near future. What is the general consensus on their products? I have never used any of their products and was wondering whether it would be worth checking out.
Dick
Thalay Sagar
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Post by Thalay Sagar »

Decent creams but overpriced. The soaps were excellent but from what I have heard they have been reformulated.
Best,
Chris

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gsgo
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Post by gsgo »

AOS shave creams and old versions of their soaps have always had very good reviews and generally shave quite well. Their lavender and sandalwood scents are some of the best. The recent price increase gets them into the high side of things with T&H, Trumpers and DRH but I think they can hang there pretty respectfully.

Wider distribution here in the US may make them the easiest available higher end product for a lot of wet shavers.

The recent soap reformulation has some crying foul but reports of the new version have been good.
Good shaving,

Gary
Esoteric83
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Post by Esoteric83 »

The stores and the retailers who carry the brand are almost always able to provide samples. Definitely worth a sample if you happen by, or if the store is not too far out of your way.

I like the Sandalwood cream best out of the lot.
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Craig_From_Cincy
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Post by Craig_From_Cincy »

AOS soaps were outstanding. They were made by Valobra and were tallow based. Performance was as good as any soap I've ever used. The soaps have been reformulated, are no longer made by Valobra (I hear they're now made in the USA), and are no longer tallow based. I'm eagerly awaiting a review of the reformulated AOS soaps, however seemingly nobody on the three shave blogs that I belong to has actually tried the reformulated soaps. Every time I ask about the reformulated soap lots of 'I've heard' responses but nobody has actually tried the soaps themselves.
Cheers,

Craig
John N.
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Post by John N. »

I am a huge fan of both the AOS sandalwood cream and soap. The scent is terrific, and both the cream and soap work as well as the best of them in every regard. Only problem is I do not know if the soap is the new version or the old. I got it about 18 months ago, and do not still have the carton which would list the ingredients. Oh well :? J.
John N.
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TRBeck
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Post by TRBeck »

John, if you got it that long ago, it's the old stuff.

As for the new soap, it actually looks a lot like the old one minus sodium tallowate. Potassium palmitate (not palmate) is the first ingredient, and it was always second right behind the tallowate. Following down the ingredients list, it's not far removed from the old formula. I'm not a believer in tallow for tallow's sake anymore, and palmitic acid is basically the same thing as stearic acid in terms of soap performance. That's not to say the soap performs well. I haven't tried it.

I probably won't try AOS soaps in their new formulation, as the price it commands now is insane IMO. $30 refills are just silly, though I suppose the price is what the market will bear. At $26 the soaps were slightly overpriced, but I dig the sandalwood scent and could get them at 20% off periodically. So, okay, maybe worth it. $30 is twice the price of a 100g Harris refill. I think it's better than Harris, but it ain't twice as good.
Regards,
Tim

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Oscar11
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Post by Oscar11 »

The older soap is good stuff, haven't tried the new formulation.
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fallingwickets
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Post by fallingwickets »

thanks for sharing your thoughts Tim

I bought my dad a bowl via nordstroms a few years back....maybe i should raid his cabinet :lol: :lol: :lol:

clive
de gustibus non est disputandum
bernards66
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Post by bernards66 »

Dick, Pretty much ditto for what Chris wrote above. The creams have always been good, but not AS good, IMO as the old school English creams that they are a copy of. Their old hard shave soaps used to lather very well but I have no idea how they are today. I also had no idea that they were now charging $30 for them(!).
Regards,
Gordon
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gruffydd63
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Post by gruffydd63 »

Thanks for all the quick feed back. Sounds like when they do open I'll approach it with caution. :)
Dick
gsgo
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Post by gsgo »

Dick, AOS always has a sample pack of their Unscented, pre shave oil, shave cream and after shave balm. When they open stop in and get one and test it for yourself, they are usually quite accommodating on handing these out especially when opening a new location.

Given the steady ups and downs of the UK based companies and their products I think AOS has been a pretty steady ship even with some of their recent changes.
Good shaving,

Gary
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TommyDawg
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Post by TommyDawg »

Esoteric83 wrote:The stores and the retailers who carry the brand are almost always able to provide samples. Definitely worth a sample if you happen by, or if the store is not too far out of your way.

I like the Sandalwood cream best out of the lot.
Interesting regarding samples. In two different stores I was told they only give out samples of their unscented products. I wonder why? Or have you gents gotten samples of others? The store is nice to have around, and I might pop on small items on occasion.... But agree completely that their price point doesn't match the product. But, to each his own...price points are an individual matter.:-)

Tom
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