Fit for a Man
WEB-EXCLUSIVE: Facial care isn't only for women. Real men care about their skin too.
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| Anthony Logistics For Men Find it: Sephora Organic Male OM4 Find it: naturalskincare4men.com |
A man’s face – a real man’s face – is thick skinned, hairy, a bit greasy, and sometimes as tortured as an artist.
To treat this unruly beast well takes work and perhaps even some experimentation. So if you think only women or the so-called “metrosexual” types spend a lot of time on their faces, it’s not entirely true. Most guys who regularly have to drag a razor blade across their face also tried to do something about the aftereffects.
Two brands are making good business out of easing the burn: Organic Male OM4 and Anthony Logistics For Men. Yes, both are considered high end and if that’s a threat to your manhood, stop reading now. If you actually want your face to feel and look better, read on because both work well.
Anthony’s line of shave products – promoted as “The best shave ever” – is available together in a handy travel-size bag and a nice suggestion for Father’s Day. The four products include a glycolic facial cleanser, pre-shave oil, shave cream, and after shave balm. In unison, the quartet are an effective and comforting bunch and a good deal for $50. Throw in their SPF 15 moisturizer or self-tanning moisturizer ($31 and $30 respectively) and you’re ready to be seen.
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The glycolic cleanser uses the acid as an exfoliating agent over an abrasive, and combines it with vitamins A, C, E, aloe vera, and peppermint. If you really are in bad need of a shave, the cleanser is a little harder to rub in, but most days it goes on and washes off easily. The pre-shave oil is a nice touch of the old barbershop shave and though it might put some off at first, it does help set up the whiskers, especially if you have more than a few days growth. The shave cream squeezes out easily and goes on quickly and smoothly, providing an excellent shave. The after shave was gentle and soothing and not particularly heavy, the way many brands have felt on my face over the years.
The facial moisturizers are both highly recommended. Each goes on light (especially if you didn’t just shave) while offering a non-greasy sunscreen or healthy, non-orange tint that doesn’t easily slide off at the first sign of a sweat.
Organic Male has its own quartet of face care, though designed around your skin type rather than the shave. There is dry/mature, normal/combination, sensitive and oily skin collections. Though each has appealing products, I chose the oily skin collection, which includes a green clay clarifying cleanser, purifying pH balancer, vitamin A regulating serum, and weightless equalizing moisturizer. This line, like the others, retails for $170, though all the products are also sold separately.
The cleanser goes on and washes off easily, though I generally had to use more than recommended to actually cover my face and neck (again, this is especially true on days when I was in bad need of a shave). Maybe the best part of the collection was the balancer. Essentially a toner that never stung or made my face feel dry and in fact felt very clean and sort of energizing. The warmer the weather, the better it felt. Don’t be put off by what appears to be two moisturizers, because the serum does the separate job of skin repair, while the moisture complex does the real moisturizing and protecting.
The extra luxury, at least of the oily skin collection, is that the serum and moisturizer seem to work pretty well as an after shave combination.
Each line makes a nice gift to that man in your life (or gift to yourself), but be sure about which approach suits the man better. It is a tortured, unruly thing we carry around all day and only a real man’s face knows for sure.
