Thanks everyone for the suggestions and advice!

Since I still haven’t had the time to adjust my shaving routine, I’ve gone with the idea of just trying to make shaving fun again, and not worrying about trying to get the perfect lather. So I’ve only been using MdC, and it’s been a blast! I love the Fougère. For a while now I’ve maintained that I could easily get rid of all my soaps and creams and only use MdC and Baum.be and I’d still be happy, I’m I’m enjoying proving it to be true.

I’ve been cycling through my brushes with the MdC, and I’ve been getting excellent lather with all of them, so the brushes are definitely not the problem, so at least that’s one variable less to deal with.