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When you hang with the shavegeeks, you hear a lot of jibber-jabber about the "three T's", but they're not talking about those eye-talian yodelers with the tuxes and white scarves. No, the "three T's" of wetshaving are Trumper, Taylor, and Truefitt & Hill. These legendary English firms have been supplying gentlemen with high-quality shaving goods for a couple of centuries now, and their shaving creams, aftershaves, and other assorted poultices are the most popular among those with a bent for the best.

But there are other, smaller firms that also make up the British shaveocracy, and D. R. Harris is one which seems to pop up regularly as a brand highly favored by older, more experienced wetshavers who've been there, done that, and know enough to know what they like. And what they like most is D. R. Harris.

Harris has been around since 1790, and to look at their current goods, you'd think they hadn't changed the labels since that first batch hot off Sy Gutenberg's press. Okay, so they do make a "Crystal Eye Gel" these days, but that's their only sop to modern tastes. Their traditional hard shaving soaps, soft shaving creams, and especially their uniquely soothing Aftershave Milk are as old-school as can be had, and while Harris may be harder to find than the three T's, it's well worth hunting down.

Did I say hard? It's damn near impossible to find D. R. Harris locally, and online isn't a walk in the park either. Google 'em and you'll find a mere handful of vendors, with prices high enough to make you pause and wonder whether you'd be better off simply buying a tub of Trumper's after all, since they're the same price and, well, you know, Trumper's money in the bank. You can always order it right at D. R. Harris's web site, but you'll pay a whopping $25 for shipping! Knox Cigar seems to have the best prices for Harris online, but it's still not cheap. You have to appreciate how good and different D. R. Harris is to make the extra effort to find it, and to lay out the extra shekels to buy it.

Lucky for me, I didn't have to shell out bupkis -- a friend of mine sent me a tube of Harris's Lavender shaving cream over the weekend, and I've been shaving with it ever since. I'd already become a convert to Harris's Aftershave Milk, my second-favorite post-shave poultice after Trumper's Skin Food, and a better choice for the dry skin winter months, so I was eager to try the company's signature product.

Harris's Lavender cream is a purple preparation -- darker and more deeply purple than Trumper's Violet cream -- and it has the finest smell of any lavender shaving product I've sniffed to date. This is the real deal -- lavender essential oil and plenty of it. The Art Of Shaving's Lavender cream also uses real essential oil, but I've got a tub of this and I don't find it lathers or shaves quite as well as the Harris does. The AOS is fine stuff and smells wonderfully pure, but the Harris smells like it's juiced with better quality lavender essential oil and more of it, and its lather is thicker, richer, and more densely protective.

I've been shaving with the Harris at home and at the Y, in both cases with a Vulfix badger brush and my trusty Featherjector razor, which is a Schick Injector loaded with a clipped-down Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade. I don't really know what else I can say about this stuff that would add anything substantive -- it's just a damned fine shaving cream, as good as any I've used, and it's now on my short list of the very finest creams available. While clueless 20-something metrosexuals shave with Zyrh, Kiehl's, Acca Kappa, and other brands that sound like noises robots make when they mate, I finally get why the wisened orangutans of the wetshaving monkey colony swear by D. R. Harris.

I'm hugely fond of Taylor's Lavender shaving cream (which, truth be told, costs around half what the Harris does), but it doesn't really smell like pure lavender essential oil -- like Taylor's other ostensibly one-note creams, there's some other stuff mixed in there. Not so the Harris. This is lavender, hear it roar. And it's got all the good skin-soothing qualities lavender brings to the table as well -- the Harris has all but chilled out my aggrieved skin after the Tabac debacle (Tabacle?) of last week, when this cologne-based shaving soap left my face feeling a bit raw.

Is D. R. Harris worth the price of Trumper, the shavegeeks' gold standard? Depends on what you're looking for. If you want Trumper quality but in a lavender scent, the Harris is what you should buy, because Trumper doesn't make a lavender cream. The Harris is easily the equal of Trumper in terms of quality, and the packaging is even a bit nicer and more vintagey to look at as well. As I said, Taylor's Lavender shaves just as well for a little more than half the price, but the Harris has the more purely and intensely lavender scent of the two, and its packaging is classier, for those who leave their goods out on the bathroom counter for guests to gawk at.

As cheap as I am, I'll buy some more of this stuff when the tube runs out. It's right up there with the best shaving creams I've tried, and as far as lavender creams go, it is the best. Like Babbo's short ribs, it's expensive, and worth it.