Trumpers Straight Shaving Lesson
Well I just got back home from a trip to London, where I had my straight shaving lesson at G F Trumpers shop in Curzon Street, London.
I don't know how many of you folks have been there but it's quite a small looking place from the outside, when you get inside you find it's quite a long thin shop and has 2 floors inside. The front part of the ground floor is the shop, and has an amazing range of creams, soaps, brushes, razors, colognes, strops, and many other things. I could have spent a couple of hours browsing the shelves, it's like an Aladdins Cave! :)
I met Melvyn who was giving me my lesson, he took me downstairs to another room full of shaving cubicles. The place has wood paneling on the walls, deep carpets, and thick red curtains round all the cubicles. Each cubicle (and there must be about 15) has a proper old barbers chair, and alll the bits and bobs each barber needs.
Melvyn took a look at my gear and was immediately looking a bit peeved to see I had a spike point razor (5/8 Bismarck spike). He wanted to teach me with a shavette type straight he had, but I insisted on using mine as this was the razor I'd be using every day. He also started on the hard sell, trying to get me to buy a shavette as they're "great for learning on" apparently. I firmly declined and we started the lesson.
He was very impressed with my strop, a No1 Best Heirloom hanging strop from Tony Miller. He was so impressed with the quality that he called the manager of Trumpers downstairs to have a look at it. They were amazed when I told them what it cost (approx £35 British Pounds), as they sell their own really cheap-looking thin and flimsy Trumpers hanging strop for about £85! :eek:
In fact 2 managers came to look at it and were almost drooling over it, and raving about the width and thickness of the leather, and the quality of the workmanship. So I wrote the address of Tony's website down for them, maybe they'll place some orders! :roflmao
Anyway we started the lesson with some stropping, and Melvyn put some french paste on the canvas side of my strop. It was just a kind of tacky paste, not an abrasive paste as such. Then, standing next to me in front of a big mirror he showed me how to hold the razor, and showed me the different strokes for different parts of the face - using both right and left hands. When he was happy I had grasped the concepts ok, he sat me in the barbers chair and gave me the hot towel treatment. After the hot towels he rubbed a generous amount of GFT Skin Food into my beard, before lathering up the right side of my face with GFT Limes Cream. He then shaved the right side of my face slowly, explaining each stroke. He did 2 passes, with and against the grain, and it was pretty smooth afterwards. He only nicked me once with the spike point, I just laughed as he looked a little worried!
Then I stood up and lathered the left side of my face, and shaved 2 passes of the left side by myself, with Melvyn making a few comments like "keep the handle higher", "keep the razor flatter to the skin there etc". There is a lot to think about when you'[re a newbie so it was nice to have him keeping an eye on my technique. I finished my two passes without drawing any blood, and my side was just as smooth as the side he'd shaved. 1 - 0 to me. :D
Then he gave me another hot towel treatment, and after that some GFT Moisturiser on my face. Considering it was just two passes it was a pretty nice shave, though still a little rough against the grain. I'm sure this will improve with time, and maybe a third pass.
I got the impression they were really trying to get me to buy as much stuff as possible while I was there. They kept suggesting things for me to buy, including a Bismarck round point razor, moisturiser, alum, soaps etc. But I explained I had a lot of those products at home anyway, and that I was on a strict budget. I just picked up some more GFT Coral Skin Food and a pot of GFT Rose shaving cream, which I'd planned to get anyway. I got the distinct impression they are used to rich folk going in there and coming out with about £1k worth of shaving products. I think they were also a little embarrassed to tell me the price of their strops when they'd seen Tony's one.
I'm not sure if the experience was worth the money really. If I hadn't had SRP for info and also Lynn's DVD to watch, then it would have been perfect, but I probably already knew 95% of what I needed to know before the lesson started. I guess that shows just how good the SRP community really is. :)
I passed Penhaligons on the way back to the railway station so I picked up a bottle of 'Blenheim Bouqet' for myself and a bottle of "Malabah" for my girlfriend - I just hope she appreciates it!
If anyone wants more info about this please ask.
Cheers. :)
