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Straight Talk on a Clean Shave

America’s best barbers come clean to give you an edge

By: Ashley Muldoon
Published: October 2008   [ Updated: Oct 31, 2008 - 6:56:30 PM ]

The master barber John Allan owns John Allan's Club for Men, which serves Manhattan's men with three locations and has another outpost in Chicago. He has been in the industry for 30 years and has even created his own grooming line, which you can find at Saks Fifth Avenue.
The wisdom "My feeling on these multiple-bladed razors is where does it stop? When are we just going to start taking off skin and forgetting about the whiskers altogether? It seems arbitrary. I use Gillette's Mach 3. For me, it's enough. Shave at night if you can. Use it as a time to bring yourself down and prepare for a good night's rest. My night shaving regimen involves a glass of Scotch and a lot of hot water and hot towels and prepping my beard properly. It's more of an indulgence than a chore."

The master barber Shorty "The Barber" Maniace oversees New York City's capital of hipsterdom, Freeman's Barbershop. He got his start nearly 20 years ago, working under Grandpa Jasper in Medical Lake, Washington.
The wisdom "After you shave, splash cold water onto your face to shut down the pores and bring down the redness (I actually use an ice cube, because I'm a freak). And try this quirky trick from Grandpa Jasper: Pull a cold terry-cloth towel against the grain of the hair at the end of the shave so that it grabs anything still attached to the face and pulls it away from the skin. Just like the hair on your head, the hair on your face is trainable. So after doing this for a while, the hair will start to grow away from the skin, which makes shaving much easier."

The master barber As proprietor of the eponymous Aidan Gill for Men, Gill has been in the barber business for nearly 40 years and claims Hunter S. Thompson as a former client. His two New Orleans shops are often touted as the city's finest.
The wisdom "We get a lot of flak because we don't use the straight razor, but the fact is they've actually been banned in many places because of hygiene concerns. Besides, technology today is just better. Are we going to give the Marine Corps muskets? I use Gillette's Mach 3 Turbo. I'm also a big fan of shave oil because it allows for a much closer shave. Mine comes with a special seal, imprinted with the phrase Cosc ar chailini, which means 'It's not for girls' in Gaelic."

The master barber Adam Dishell opened Southern California's go-to old-world barbershop, The Shave of Beverly Hills, in 2005. Bruce Willis is a client.
The wisdom "I've always been a big fan of the disposable Sensor from Gillette. There's something about the angle of the blade that works so well on a man's face. Also, if you run out of shaving cream, try a thick, oil-based moisturizer instead. One time, all of our warmers broke and we had no way of creating our usual lather for our clients, so I pulled a jar of D. R. Harris & Co. Almond Oil Skinfood from the shelf. It was fantastic."

The master barber Matthew Martin is the brains behind Chicago's Truefitt & Hill. He traded in his salesman's briefcase for a barber's coat more than a decade ago after experiencing his first hot shave.
The wisdom "If I want to make my goatee look really clean, I steal one of my wife's little pink razors. It's so tiny and fragile that you can get a really nice line. A lot of these new razors are just marketing. When I first went into the business, I started collecting old advertising pages on eBay. My favorite is from the early 1900s. It shows a razor with a screw on the bottom that, as it unwinds, causes the whole thing to vibrate. Sound familiar? As for products, I'm addicted to shave oil. I use it with shaving cream for the pre-shave (going with the grain), then I reapply it and shave against the grain, this time without the cream so that I can see the hairs I missed."