Yesterday I said I would try shaving with Cremo Cream and foregoing any after-shave whatsoever — just shave, rinse with cold water, and see if my hunch was true that Cremo Cream is so gentle on your skin that you don’t need to calm things down with a post-shave poultice afterward.

Well, today I did just that. Got another superlative shave from just the Cremo Cream and my Merkur HD razor, and did nothing but splash some cold water on my face at the end.

My face felt great. There was that slight exfoliation tingle like I get after a really close straight razor shave, which is a good thing. But there was not a trace of heat, burn, tightness, rawness, you name it. All the reasons you pamper your puss with fill-in-the-blank after a shave just weren’t there at all.

About an hour or so later, though, my face started to feel a bit, well, dry. I’ve got very oily skin to begin with, so when my skin feels dry, even slightly, something, as Miss Clavell would say, is not right.

My face didn’t hurt. Nor did it seem irritated, itchy, or raw in the slightest. It just felt drier than normal. Drier than it should be.

I’ve been using Trumper’s skin food for about a year now after my shaving, which is a solution of gum and glycerin, with some rosewater and menthol crystals as well. The glycerin and rosewater soothe and moisturize your skin, and the gum dries to cover your skin for a few hours till everything settles down nicely. Used sparingly, you can’t see or even feel the skin food on your face after it dries, but man oh man does it work wonders. It’s easily my favorite post-shave poultice.

The thing is, I think I’ve been taking skin food for granted. It does such an incredible job, and so subtly, that it’s only today, when I skipped it, that I noticed what a big difference it’s been making all this time. The razor, brush, and cream get all the attention, but the skin food is an indispensable part of the shave.

Bottom line: Cremo Cream is a revelation, but it’s miraculous powers don’t extend to relieving you of the need to use a post-shave of some sort.

Incidentally, I called Cremo Cream yesterday to ask them if this stuff could A. be used with a shaving brush without degrading its skin lube mojo, and B. whether any of its atypical ingredients might not be the best thing to get on badger hair. They said it could be used with a brush without any worry about gunking up a badger brush, but that Cremo Cream was designed specifically to work best when applied with the hands only.

So tomorrow I try it with a brush. I need to see if I can cross-breed the modern tech breakthrough with the olde schoole pleasure throb I get from using my favorite Vulfix #2235 badger brush. The Cremo Cream shaves like a dream, but I’m not ready to ditch the brush just yet. My hope is they work well together — even if the brush doesn’t make the Cremo work any better, I want to make sure it doesn’t make it work any worse.