Razor: Razorine Clone
Blade: Gillette Wilkinson Sword
Brush: Aloha Shaving 26mm 3-Band Finest SHD
Soap: Phoenix Artisan Accoutrements Black Bot
Aftershave: Phoenix Artisan Accoutrements Black Bot
Other: Leeming Black Belt Cologne
They say all good things must come to an end and it sounds like this is the end of the road for Black Bot. Not for me, luckily my tub and aftershave still has plenty of life, but for Phoenix Artisan Accoutrements. This has hit their cull list for discontinuation. That is a shame but with a line-up as large as the PAA catalogue it is understandable that they need to drop some scents from time to time to make room for new product lines.
Black Bot is a scent based on the original Black Bot cologne by Leeming. This is the lesser-known (and far superior IMHO) brother to Hai Karate. It is a musky throwback scent that calls back to the earlier 70s. Something about this scent has always spoken to me. I’m guessing it was in my dad’s fragrance arsenal back in the day. It is for sure a throwback scent but to me, it stands alone atop the mountain when it comes to vintage scents and is still my favourite PAA offering. I’ll take this over Old Spice or Brut any day of the week and while it does smell dated, it is still very wearable today. If you haven’t tried this before, your time is almost up, head over to PAA’s website (or your favourite vendor that carries PAA) and order yourself some before it is gone forever.
I also wanted to talk about the razor for today. This Razorine clone is a cheapie knock-off I picked up from Aliexpress. I wanted to get a feel for how that style of razor would be to shave with. I don’t know how true it is to the Razorine. It is an interesting razor. Quality isn’t very good, fit and finish is cheap looking, it has alignment issues if you aren’t careful, it feels awkward to shave with, and yet somehow I’ve been getting really good shaves with it. For an experienced shaver, it might be worth a buy. I am going to keep my eyes open for an authentic Razorine for a deal so I can upgrade and give that a try to compare. For now it is was a cheap experiment.
A pretty good shave to start the week. All for now – J
