Thread: Castle Forbes Lavender

Hello gents, and ladies if any are reading, I have been lurking around here and posting here and there, as of today I am using a parker shavette. I actually purchased a dovo silver steel off ebay last week which should be here tomorrow and even though I will be sending it off to be honed before giving it a try, I realized "Dope, you don't have a strop." So over the weekend I realized I had a gift card from Christmas that I haven't even activated, it got activated today and I purchased a 3in red latigo strop from SRD and while poking around, I figured I will also throw in a nice new shave cream to try.

I have not really seen or heard anything bad about CF products, so I decided to order the Lavender cream as well with the strop. I am extremely excited to try it out as it seems to be a benchmark, next to lets say Martin De Candre or some say XPEC (for those that havent tried MDC myself included.) I did do some searching of the forum here and I see the most talked about is the CF lime and cedarwood and sandalwood. I do like my mama bears vanilla sandalwood soap, and that is the prime reason I didn't get the CF version. I want to experience new things, different scents can make this quite the adventure. However I do have a question in this post. Those of you who use the Lavender, how is the scent? Is it potent and sticks with you, is it too "feminine" or will my lady appreciate it on me and not make fun of me for getting lavender shave cream . I suppose this could be a YMMV type of thing, but just trying to see what you good people think is all.

I noticed there are a lot of different methods for loading up a brush with this stuff and getting the superior lather it is famous for in this forum, so I suppose depending on when I try my first round with it we will find out if I need to repost asking about how to get this to its ultimate performance. As always, I appreciate all responses and thanks for stopping by!

The stuff has a moderately strong fragrance however after you wash it off it does not linger at all. Unlike Xpec which stays with you forever.

It's very easy to lather up. I imagine even a chimp could do it.

Hi! I used this very cream today for my morning shave. This is maybe my 5th or 6th shave with the cream and the scent has already gone down a bit. During the shave, as big spendur says, the scent is definitely noticeable but after you rinse the lather off, the scent is totally gone. Applying an after shave splash or balm afterwards almost secures that the scent goes. I applied cologne today and that's all I can smell on my, barely 2 hours after.

Hope this helps. You've made a great choice - Castle Forbes Lavender is my only cream (I am exclusively a soap guy) as it lathers superbly and leaves a really good feeling after you rinse. I also have the CF balm and am dying to try it out.

Hollywood, Castle Forbes is a stellar shave cream. It is slightly on the hard side, and I use it as I would soap. Mine is the lavender version. The fragrance is soft and quite pleasing. Xpec has a robust fragrance that awakens the senses. It's a superb cream in every way. Martin de Candre is a celestial soap. With these three, you soar in shave heaven.

Well the cream arrived today and to be quite honest, I cannot wait to try it. I had a very busy week and haven't had time to be looking around on here but I will certainly keep up to date with how it goes now. The busy week was nice so I wasn't sitting around in anticipation waiting for my order. I will let you folks know how it goes after I use it in a little while!!

Well I tried it earlier and I have to say, the scent is quite pleasing yet strong when you first smell it. As far as lathering quality. I have to experiment a little bit as I am quite sure I used too much water. I have read that it likes water but I definitely shouldn't have put so much in. What I did was smear some on the bottom of my bowl and added some water, enough to cover the bottom (which is where I should've stopped). Then after letting it sit for a bit I started to build, and man did it build quick. The lather was huge in the beginning and I should have left it there (the prep phase). But I thought "well lets add a bit more water and see what happens". What happened was it was too much. On my second pass lather was flying everywhere but it was not staying on my face, a very light if any coating. That will take a bit of experimentation as I said earlier so I will try again monday night and see what happens then. I should also note that I didn't do a test lather either. I was so excited that I just dove right in haha.