Another G.B. Kent brush — the Infinity, their synthetic — with the WWBT design, though less extreme than the Kent BK-4 (or 8 or whatever). This is quite a nice little brush — good resilience without being scrubby, and much more present to the face than the Plissoft knots, which feel softer.
I tried loading the (well shaken-out) brush heavily with the CK-6 soap, applying it, and then adding a little water to the brush to bring up the lather a bit more. It worked well enough, but I was just playing around. This soap is (as you see) the Orange Doppelgänger, the homage to Chaps, byRalph Lauren. As I noted last week, the Doppelgänger gang line up like this:
Black Label = Sauvage by Christian Dior
Oxblood Label = Sartorial by Penhaligan’s
Orange Label = Chaps by Ralph Lauren
Grey Label = Creed Aventus
In the title I identify my Above the Tie as an R1, but in fact it’s an R, since I bought it prior to the advent of the R2 (the open-comb equivalent) and so the “1” was redundant at the time. And though I find their S1 slant to be superb, the S2 was too harsh for me. I can’t recall whether I have any experience with the R2. (Above the Tie’s 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee makes the decision just to try one of their razors much easier — and in fact I used that guarantee with zero problems with the S2.)
The shave was exceptionally nice: great shaving soap, fine lather, excellent razor, good brand of blade for me, and, of course, a certain level of skill gained through daily practice. (I wonder: if I grew a beard again — stopped shaving — for six months, when I resumed shaving, would my skill have gotten rusty so that nicks would be frequent? We’ll never know.)
