The luxurious Tonka & Tobacco Flower shaving cream by St. James

The folks at St. James of London, who we featured earlier with their phenomenal colognes, also make some interesting shaving options.  We are fortunate enough to be trying their Tonka & Tobacco Flower shaving cream.  This cream smells just as delicious as the cologne.

Since I am working with only their shaving cream, a few suitable companions had to be identified.  For this first test, I was shaving off almost 6 days’ worth of growth as a result of testing beard oil the previous week.  In other words a bigger job than usual.  Needless to say, a proper shaving oil had to be involved.  An unscented oil was my preference in order to let that tobacco flower aroma be fully savored.  I chose my long trusted IMPERIAL pre-shave oil. To finishing thing off, a complementary and worthy after shave was also needed. The beautifully simple vanilla aftershave from Pinaud-Clubman was a perfect match for the tobacco flower.

So those are the players.  After applying a bit of pre-shave oil, it was onto the shaving cream.  First surprise – the colour!  Brown?!  Unexpected!  Eh!  The next kick was the fabulous aroma; it just doesn’t’ get old.  It’s rich, smooth and timeless! Then the application of the cream revealed just how nice of product this really is.  Think; whipped butter!  Again, those adjectives: rich and smooth come to mind.  It covered incredibly well and became even smoother with a touch of water being added to the mix.

In retrospect, the pre-shave oil might not have been all that necessary.  Note for next time.  The cream offered excellent coverage and surprising lubrication.  I have been using shaving soaps lately and no matter how good of a soap, I always feel like cream has an edge over it.  That said, this is certainly a top shelve cream.

The shave was smooth and agreeable like morning coffee with my lady.  The rinse off phase is usually done with a wet wash cloth and was straight forward leaving no residue.  The final touch with the old-school Pinaud-Clubman splash was fresh and the vanilla aroma worked perfectly well with the tobacco flower.

A small note on the longevity of the scent:  as this is a shaving product, the scent was shorter lived at perhaps 20 – 30 minutes.  This makes perfect sense as you shouldn’t be expecting your shave cream to do your cologne’s job.

In short, this was an extremely comfortable shave and I am already looking forward to use this luxurious cream again. Well done St. James!