Trumpers Sandalwood

Geo F Trumper is recognised as the finest traditional gentlemen’s barber in London and is known throughout the world for its matchless range of gentlemen’s fragrances and grooming products.

Offering a choice of more than twenty colognes including the signature GFT fragrance, Trumper also have one of the largest ranges of gentlemen’s grooming products and accessories. This includes shaving creams and soaps, aftershave balms, skin foods and moisturisers, bath soaps and shower gels, razors, shaving brushes, mirrors, hair brushes and bathroom requisites.

I’ve always been happy with my Art of Shaving products, but the Trumpers sandalwood was a revelation on my skin.  Different people have different reactions to different products, of course, but a pea-sized amount of the Trumper’s shave cream generated way more lather than I needed for two passes, and the lather felt considerably slicker and afforded more of a cushion.

I followed up the shave with a few drops of “Skin Food.”  I’ve tried TAOS’ after shave balm in the past and didn’t much care for it.  It does its job and is quite soothing, but I found it to be oilier and heavier than I liked.  The Skin Food, by contrast, goes on very light and several hours later my face still feels very soft.  A lot of people seem to like the Skin Food as a pre-shave lotion as well, to soften the beard before the shave, but that seems unnecessary to me if you use enough water and your cream or soap is sufficiently slick.

Trumpers scent seemed to me decidedly more “barber shoppy” than the TAOS, which I find a bit warmer and more subtle.  I don’t mean to imply anything unpleasant about the scent of the Trumper’s at all, however.  I like it quite a lot, and Dianna likes it more than I do, which is probably the important thing.

I have some additional products I’d like to try now, specifically Castle Forbes’ Limes cream.

Try different things.

Don Draper and the other men at Sterling Cooper have haircuts that demand that you take them seriously. Your grandpa probably did his hair the same way: tight on the sides with a sharp part on the left side of the head. And of course, the hair needs that healthy looking shine.

Unfortunately, many men today walk around with the same boyish haircuts they’ve had since high school. Sure, your hair spiked in the front or tussled carelessly looked cool when you were 17, but it looks goofy when you’re 30. You want a haircut that looks manly, not juvenile.

To help upgrade your hairstyle to something more respectable, we provide the following tips from the Emmy Award-winning hairstylist of Mad Men, Gloria Ponce.

Worth noting that I’d been sporting the ‘Don Draper’ for a month before this piece ran.

FYI, while Brett likes good ol’ Brylcreem, and Gloria Ponce prefers American Crew products, I’ve been using Gage for Men products for quite a while now since my stylist recommended them to me, and I like them a lot.  The Gage products all have a very masculine fragrance that I find rather pleasant.  The scent is very old school barbershop, I enjoy it.  It’s not so overpowering that it would interfere with a cologne or after shave, however.

I haven’t tried any of the pomades yet, but I’ve used and liked the 3/4 Cream, the Shaping Gel, and of course, the Daily Shampoo and Daily Conditioner.