It’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better. — Jony Ive
This is a post about shaving.
For years I used whatever razor was easiest to buy.
Gillette. Harry’s. Subscription refills. Plastic handles. Multi-blade cartridges.
A lifetime of marketing persuading me a “better” shave would be available with every new version.
Two blades. Three blades. Five? Why not!
It felt like progress, and who was I to disagree? Everyone I know has one of the well-known brands, and every ad I see shows me that the latest gaudy multi-blade razor really is “the best a man can get”.
But recently I started questioning that assumption.
Is this actually better? Or is it just newer and marketed better?
So I tried something older: wet shaving.
A safety razor. A brush. Proper soap. A setup that hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades.
It’s been a bit of a revelation.
The quality of shave
The biggest surprise was the shave itself.
More blades are supposed to mean a closer shave. In reality, it often means more irritation—multiple blades dragging over the same skin.
A safety razor is the opposite. One blade.
You slow down. Let the weight of the razor do the work.
The result is a closer shave with less irritation and fewer ingrown hairs.
It feels calmer, more deliberate, and less like scraping plastic across your face.
Skin and experience
Wet shaving isn’t just the blade, it’s the process.
You build a lather. You prepare your skin. You take a minute instead of rushing through it.
My skin feels noticeably better. Less redness. Less dryness. And the act itself has become something I look forward to.
There’s something grounding about it.
In a world optimised for speed, it forces a little slowness.
The cost
Cartridge razors are expensive. There’s a good reason most pharmacies lock them down and hide them behind the counter.
It can cost £10–£20 for a set of refills.
So a single cartridge will often be ~£1-2.
Safety razor blades cost pennies.
Even factoring in a razor, brush, and soap, the ongoing cost drops dramatically.
It’s one of those rare cases where the higher-quality option is also cheaper.
So much of the shaving industry today is seemingly focused on newer and flashier, with “improved formulas”. But so much of the cost you pay goes to profit margin and marketing. And the rest goes to product and packaging that I’d argue doesn’t need to exist.
The environmental angle
This was part of what pushed me to try it.
Plastic handles. Disposable cartridges. Excess packaging.
It all adds up, and I’m continually inspired by how many solutions to our environmental challenges are not “new” ways of doing things that we need to invest - they are old ways that we need to bring back and normalise again.
Safety razor blades are just a slither of metal. Small. Recyclable. There is no bulky plastic casing. There is barely any packaging.
And the razor handle itself can last a lifetime. You can buy them second hand and they still fit the same blades they were selling 50 years ago.
It’s one of those environmental wins that doesn’t require sacrifice. The experience is actually improved.
New doesn’t always mean better
That’s a broader idea I keep coming back to.
We’re conditioned to believe newer = better. In the world of computers, this is usually true. I loved my original iPhone, but when compared to the iPhone I have today, I know which one I’d prefer to take a photo with.
But outside of computers, I’m realising that a lot of the world has succumbed to enshitification. Newer almost universally does not mean better, it means worse.
You can look at food, architecture, furniture, clothing, and more to see extremely obvious signs of products that have gotten worse over time, while being marketed with such force that they are still purchased.
More blades. More features. More “innovation.”
Sometimes innovation is just iteration on top of an unnecessary idea.
Sometimes ”new” is actually optimised for increasing corporate profit margin, rather than customer experience.
For me, wet shaving is an eye-opening reminder that some problems were already solved — simply and elegantly — before we complicated them.
Progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes the best upgrade is a step backwards.
My recommendations
If you’re curious, it’s a low-risk experiment:
- Watch this video. A Scottish chap in his bathroom shaving and explaining the whole process with clarity and authority. The comments alone are worth your time.
- Start with a simple safety razor — you don’t have to spend a fortune.
- Get a good shaving soap or cream. In London I’m a big fan of Taylor’s of Old Bond Street.
- Use a brush—it really helps prepare, and feels so much better.
- Take your time for the first few shaves. I spent a lot of my weekend with shaving cream on my face!
There’s a small learning curve. You might nick yourself once or twice.
But then it might click, like it has for me.
The chances are, you’ll find that something older, slower, and simpler ends up being better in almost every way.