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I shaved again with the D. R. Harris Lavendar shaving cream today, which makes it four shaves in a row I've been using this exquisite stuff, and I'm left with just one question:

Why no Harris?

Of the four most popular online wetshaving vendors for shavegeeks -- Classic Shaving, Lee's Razors, Em's Place, and QED -- none of them sells D. R. Harris.

My local fancy-pants toiletries shop sells all kinds of high-end wetshaving stuff -- Trumper's creams, soaps, Skin Food, and colognes, Coates's creams, the Art of Shaving's creams, Kent, Simpson, and Vulfix brushes, Merkur razors and blades, and even those Marseilles cubes that the Method Shaving geeks swear by. But no Harris.

I don't understand it. I can't throw a rock in this country without hitting a store that sells The Art Of Shaving products. Trumper's all over the place. Trufitt & Hill is opening up new shops in NYC and elsewhere, and their products are sold in malls across the country. Even Taylor, the biggest bang for the buck in traditional English shaving cream, can be found in shops in many cities. Why no Harris?

This D. R. Harris Lavender shaving cream I've been shaving with is terrific stuff -- it's easily the best lavender-scented shaving product I've come across. The packaging, with its metal tube and hardy toothpaste-style cap (not the E-Z-Break caps found, for example, on Coates' plastic tubes) and elegant graphics, is the best I've seen on any wetshaving brand yet. The whole thing exudes quality and refinement, and it's no more expensive than Trumper.

So why can't I buy this stuff anywhere locally? And why, if I buy it online, do nine out of ten vendors exist only in the UK and charge an arm and a leg for shipping to the States?

Is Harris a smaller company than Trumper/Truefitt/Taylor, so it can't spread itself too thin? There must be some reason why this absolutely top-shelf English wetshaving company's products are so hard to come by in this country, when the other classic British brands are everywhere.

Is it the curse of Franco Harris? Did the Steeler running back run out of bounds to avoid a hit once too many times for this country's appetite for cowardice? Did Richard Harris's singing career anger the gods? Or was it Katherine Harris?

I blame Katherine Harris.