Thread: Luxury shaving

Heres a question I don't hear anyone talk about, Luxury towels/face cloths. Every one talks about the best shaver, the best brushes, the best soaps/creams, the best hones and the best strops to improve the entire shave experience.

But if you are realy trying to have the best shave of your life should you not also consider the towel you are using for your preshave soak? Or that you are using to dry your face with post shave?

There are some unbelieveably nice towels out there, why hasn't any one given them a try? LOL

I just think for the ultimate experience one would need an ultimate towel aswell or your only having a partly ultimate experience.

I purchased the steaming towels and barber towels from Classic shaving. The barbers towels were horrible. They started to deteriorate during the first wash, and were unusable after a month. I got a set of bar towels from Bed, Bath and Beyond that were much better.

Towels were probably used more in old time barbershops. I'd bet most of us these days get our pre-shave soak in the shower.

Honestly a wash clothe from the shower is just as good as a barber's towel. That's what I use after I let it soak in steaming hot water. Apply lather to my face, press steaming cloth on my face. Then I wipe the lather off and reapply. Works.

I just bought a set of Turkish cotton towels. They came with a free "bath mat" - made of the same material but a bit thicker than the towels. Since I don't need a bath mat I now have a damn fine hot towel!

(Available separately, for reference: Turkish Cotton Bath Mat, Burgundy - eBay (item 280334401643 end time Apr-22-09 15:08:28 PDT) )

Any quality cotton towel or wash cloth will be about as good as it gets. Like most, I generally shave after showering and skip the hot towel (which would be redundant after a shower). I do, however, use the hot towel approach for my Saturday night shaves and I just use a good cotton wash cloth soaked in really hot water.

I do not towel dry my face after a shave, I apply a mixture of 50% Witch Hazel (which is actually a hydrosol containing mostly water) and 50% aftershave and let my face air dry.

My routine is to shower, then do the stropping. By the time I have completed the stropping, lather building and splash my face has cooled and dried too much to jump right into the shave so I do the hot towel treatment to resoften the beard. So a nice towel is important to me. Does anyone have a source for nice barber towels?

Well I've seen a number of towels online made with "microcotton" which are sold as luxury towels. So I would assume that they would have companion facecloths that should be exceptionaly soft and would likely hold alot of water if they are actualy a micro-fiber. Though I would personaly preffer to see/feel one instore before dishing out $20+ dollars for a facecloth.

Don't hold me to this but I believe Max's online shop has some towels and such. I'll have to check it out but I'm pretty sure I saw them there. If the towels are anything like his razors, they should be pretty d*%m good towels!

A plain terry wash cloth works just fine.