The Art Of Shaving continues to expand its offerings. I recently purchased some of their Olibanum Pepper shave cream and got a bit of a surprise.
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Olibanum?
From The Art Of Shaving’s website:
This unique aromatic experience features smoky, spicy Olibanum sourced from Northeastern Africa’s Incense Valley, blended with fresh, hand-picked Indian Black Pepper.
Olibanum is also known as Frankincense. It’s an aromatic resin used in incense and fragrances and has been described as woody, with hints of spice and fruit.
Along with the shave cream The Art Of Shaving offers the scent in a pre-shave oil and an aftershave balm.
My Experience With The Art Of Shaving Olibanum Pepper Shave Cream
This is quite probably the creamiest, “stickiest” shaving cream I have ever used. I’m guessing that I got a jar fresh from production and it hasn’t been sitting in a warehouse somewhere. There’s not even a hint of dehydration to it.
Consequently, loading a shave brush requires the merest touch of the brush’s bristles to the cream. No swirling, twirling, or stirring required. As you might expect it mixed with water in no time at all to generate a thick, voluminous lather, even in my “hard” water!
Olibanum may be described by others as “woody with hints of spice and fruit,” but my very uneducated nose gets a sweet vanilla note from my jar of The Art Of Shaving Olibanum Pepper shave cream. Lathered on the face it softens into much more of a smoky floral note with just a hint of spice behind it. Maybe after I let it sit in my shave den a while the scent will transform into something more…Frankincense-ish.
But the performance! I usually get good performance from The Art Of Shaving shave creams (soaps are a different story…) but this one is just exceptional. Really stellar lubrication and protection–something my jaded shave-nerd sensibilities did not expect.
Shave Cream Ingredients: Aqua/Water/Eau, Palmitic Acid, Myristic Acid, Stearic Acid, Glycerin, Coconut Acid, Potassium Hydroxide, Parfum/Fragrance, Triethanolamine, Boswellia Carterii Oil, Piper Nigrum (Pepper) Seed Oil, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Hydroxide, Tetrasodium EDTA, PEG-4 Laurate, PEG-4 Dilaurate, Disodium EDTA, Lauric Acid, Limonene, PEG-4, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate
This ingredient mix seems to be a departure from the other The Art Of Shaving shave cream I recently purchased, and I’m wondering if they are going through another reformulation. If they are, I’m conflicted: on the one hand there are a more chemical ingredients with long names. On the other hand, man, does this shave cream perform well for me….
Conclusion
The Art Of Shaving Olibanum Pepper Shave Cream was a surprise to me. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the scent (YMMV of course) and I’m not familiar with some of the ingredients, which gives me pause. But if my experience with the performance of the shave cream is typical I can recommend it without much reservation.
I found their pre-shave oil to be a bit sticky too.