Update: 5-24-19 I've updated my original 2 star rating to a 4. It turns out that for several months I was using too much water in my boar brush which caused me all sorts of problems for ALL my soaps, Proraso more-so than others since it has more water in it already than other stuff out there. I could not get dense slippery lather from it if my life depended on it, just thin watery bubbles. You know that famous "Marco Method" of loading a brush? It's horrible, for a boar brush/Proraso in particular which naturally holds more water than badgers and synthetics do, even when squeezed. If you take a soaking wet boar and gravity drain it, boy are you in for trouble! Instead, gently squeeze the water out of it THEN load your wet Proraso puck for roughly a minute. The time required is greatly dependent on the backbone of your brush. A Semogue 1250 is fantastic for this and my goto brush. A Semogue 1800 takes twice as long to load, for example. Loaded correctly, Proraso lather is just fine unless you're looking for the excessive slip and residual slickness offered by tallow-based shave soaps. I've found that my oily skin doesn't fare well with many heavily tallow-based soaps post-shave, where I tend to get greasy. Proraso leaves me with a nicely supple/hydrated face after the cold water rinse post shaving. No aftershave required. The Red scent is a but over-the-top sweet powdery sandalwood but addictive, the White and Green are very nice as well. Knocking off 1 star for the price. $10 is high considering you can walk into any drugstore in Europe and get this for less than $5. It's sad that the USA has such horribly performing shave products and we have to pay through the nose for the basic cheap/good stuff Europe has to offer like Proraso and Palmolive shave sticks. Oh well. Update: 1-16-19 I have so fallen out of love with my first shaving soap love, Proraso Red. I still absolutely love the scent and packaging and the idea of it but it’s just not that great for the price. The main issue is slickness and cushion. Arko, which costs half the price and smells 1/4th as good, is a top notch performer. Proraso just does not contain the slickness of soaps way below its price and slightly above the top notch stuff. If this stuff was $5 a tub it would be ok but not great in performance. I still keep my tub around for the occasional sniff but that’s all it’s good for! Update: 12/26/18 Not a fan of TOBS Sandalwood, hated the aroma like a few others. Proraso is my current favorite along with the Cremo as a pre-shave followed by Duke Cannon post-shave balm. Wonderful combo! Original Review: I am a newbie wet-shaver, I got tired of the generic crappy expensive blades and foamy/non-cushioning aeorosol shaving creams. I’m getting too old to shave like a poor high school student. Sandalwood: I don’t know what Sandalwood is supposed to smell like. The first Sandalwood cream I bought was a Cremo from a local store. I love that type of smell because it doesn’t smell like anything I’ve ever encountered on any of the old people from my youth. Some stuff just immediately turns me off like Aqua Velva, Brut, and Old Spice. I don’t want to smell like old people from the past and Sandalwood got me excited. My Sandalwood frame of reference henceforth is Cremo. When the Proraso Red arrived I found it very different than the Cremo aroma. It is much more understated and complex and interesting compared to the Cremo. There are fruity/soapy notes all playing against each other with a very subtle Sandalwood fragrance hiding in the back occasionally peeking out to say hi. It has become my favorite so far because of its understated elegance. I have a tub of TOBS in the way, I wonder where this rabbit-hole will lead me? Very nice lather and cushion. Many have said its impossible to NOT get a nice Proraso lather. Let me tell you how to do it because I had a newbie moment! I tried to take a chunk of the soap from the tub and lather it sepereately in my shaving bowl. Do NOT do this! This soap is very hard and if you move a piece to another bowl it will be difficult to dissolve. It’ll just get caught in the brush and you’ll be swearing trying to catch and dissolve it. Instead, soak your brush in hot water, shake most of it off, lather in the soap tub for 10-15 seconds, THEN move the soapy brush to your shave bowl and whip away adding just a few drops of hot water if you need it. Voila, fantastic cream with lots of peaks and cushion and a glorious aroma. Barbasol, Bic, Gillette, it’s been nice knowing you.....I guess. It’s time for us to go our separate ways. Bonne journée, Ciao!
