Rules of Thrifting : Pay a Higher Price (sometimes)

Spring is here, officially on the calendar and kinda-sorta in the weather. With it's arrival comes my switch from Bay Rhum, my preferred aftershave in the colder months, to Royall Lyme. With its bright, clean scent redolent of fresh citrus, I find it to just the thing on a warm sunny day as opposed to the warming Winter spice of Bay Rhum. My last bottle was dwindling, and with only a few days worth left in it I needed to restock. 

Thrift, cheapness, and even common sense would have me go to the internet to seek out the best price from among a number of purveyors, but instead I chose to get dressed and take the subway to Harvard Square to purchase a bottle from the Andover Shop. Best price I could find online was about $30 for a four ounce bottle. At the Andover Shop, I paid $42.50. So why would I, your humble arbiter of the ways of the dashing cheapskate, effectively waste $12.50 so needlessly? Have I gone mad? Is this the end?

Truthfully, I have a very sound reason for the occasional wasteful purchase such as this. If you've read this blog at all, you probably know that I am loathe to pay not only full retail but anything even remotely approaching it, for almost anything. As such, over the years I have developed a number of strategies and tips to share with you all on how the better things can be had for pennies on the dollar.  It takes hard work and perseverance, but its worth it if you're crazy enough to think it is. Still, once in a while, it's nice to just walk in and buy something, and what's the point of all this hard nosed cheapness if you can't treat yourself on a minor extravagance sometimes?

Besides, it's not just a new bottle of aftershave I got that day last week when I bought this. I dressed in the morning and took the subway to Harvard Square, these days something of a treat in itself. I walked its historic brick sidewalks and visited the infamous Charlie Davidson at the Andover Shop. I spent a while marveling at the pile of gorgeous fabrics in one corner, than gained some inspiration for the coming Summer by looking through their newly arrived collection. I got to effectively sit at the master's feet for a bit as he handed down sartorial wisdom from on high, as he is wont to do, and even had a chuckle at one of his famously bawdy remarks, rattled off as though any normal person would say such a thing in mixed company. 

You might say I paid $30 for the aftershave and $12.50 for atmosphere, context, and inspiration. Thrift shopping is something I will likely do for the rest of my life, even if I ever find myself in a fanatical position where it became unnecessary, a prospect which looks increasingly less likely the older I get. But if I don't occasionally at least visit the shops where the goods I like to buy hailed from originally, I lose some of what makes them valuable to me. True, I know these things are expensive at the start of their life cycle, but it's not just material and construction that makes them so. There is an undefinable meaning and essence imbued in these things, and you can feel it when you see them in their natural habitat. It may be that more than anything that makes them so desirable when I do find them for next to nothing amid a rack full of utter garbage. Indeed, it's that undefinable quality that drives to me to collect and wear these things at all in a life that requires simply that I be dressed, in anything. The extra $12.50 also buys perspective.

So, odd as it may seem, one of the rules of thrifting, perhaps one of the most important, is to go to a nice store and spend too much on something once in a while. As long as you don't make a habit of it, no one has to know.

p.s. apologies for the sparseness of posting here these last few weeks. I needed a break, but will return to more frequent posting soon.

p.p.s. S/S 2014 happening now in the online Shop, with more to come soon. Check it out.

Worth Every Penny: Proper Aftershave

As fussy as I can be about so many inconsequential things, I've never been fussy about bathroom products. Ivory soap and Old Spice had suited me just fine for most of my life. Until recently, that is. Lately I find that I have developed an appreciation for better personal grooming products. This isn't to say that I now spend outrageous sums of money on numerous "artisinal" pseudo-luxuries, but a small collection of well chosen, time tested products can be worth every penny.

For the longest time, I was not the least an aftershave kind of guy. Despite the fact that I've been shaving with a safety razor since my teen-age years, and more recently sometimes with a straight blade, I always found a splash of ice cold water to be enough. Then I reverted back to Old Spice, because it was nostalgic and cheap. After mentioning it in a blog post a while back, a disgruntled reader informed me via email in no uncertain terms that Old Spice was a "stink bomb", low brow dime store junk worse than wearing no aftershave at all. And while I found his criticism to be more than a little overly harsh, it did get me thinking of the old fashioned scents I used to steal out of the sample bottles when I worked at Simon's in high school.

Bay rum is the fragrance I remember most. The bottle on the left is Ogallala Bay Rum out of Nebraska, $32 for an 8 oz. bottle at Leavitt & Pierce tobacco shop in Harvard Square. It's spicy and herbaceous, even a little sweet. It's bracing on the face right after a wet shave, providing an old school cool burn that is invigorating, stopping just shy of being painful. I prefer the Special Reserve Double Strength. It tightens the skin nicely, leaving it very smooth. The scent comes on strong at first, but quickly fades in to a mere pleasant suggestion. Very masculine, very old time barber shop. Plus, the 19th century apothecary look of the bottle is just something nice to see on the shelf.

On the right is Royall Lyme, the original scent from in the Royall line. Made from a Bermuda recipe using lots of Caribbean limes, its brighter, fresher and lighter than the bay rum, making it an ideal choice for warmer weather. Like the bay rum, its bracing and astringent, leaving my skin feeling tight and fresh. At nearly $47.50 for a 4 oz. bottle at the Andover Shop in Harvard Square, it sure ain't cheap, but this bottle will last me from now until September for two years running, so that really isn't so bad. You can get it directly from the Royall web site for $40 if you like, but to me the extra $7.50 is worth going to a men's shop and buying it properly, by which I mean wearing a coat and tie in place full of coats and ties and handing over the cash, not gawking at the lap top in your pyjamas. There is still, after all, something to be said for that. Besides, all this thrifty living I discuss here is meaningless without an indulgence now and then.

This stuff makes my skin feel better and puts me in a good mood in the morning, and my little 3 year old girl always says I smell nice. Its worth every penny.

p.s. stay tuned for an upcoming dissertation on the pleasures of (gasp!) hippie soap.