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I'm getting emails about these so-called "new school" shaving creams I've been championing lately, like Nancy Boy and Truefitt & Hill's Ultimate Comfort. Guys want to know if their favorite mall cosmetic counter crap is as good as these two new shaving creams, so they can breathe a sigh of relief and feel better about having paid 30 clams for a plastic tube of some over-cologned designer spew that's honestly worse than if you just lathered up with a bar of Dove and shaved with that.

Listen to me. Most "new" shaving creams marketed to young guys and sold at mall men's cosmetic counters suck. Even the ones that seem like they've been around for a long time and hence have some legitimacy, like Kiehl's. I've tried every shaving cream Kiehl's makes, and never got a decent shave from any of them. I don't mean to slag the brand -- Kiehl's makes some products I like and use regularly, like their legendary lip balm. But their shaving products aren't very good at all, at least not on my skin.

I've tried samples of Jack Black, Zirh, American Crew, Clinique, Polo, you name it, if Nordtrom's men's cosmetics counter had samples of it, I've shaved with it. And each one was worse than the last. I've got nothing against any of these companies, and like with Kiehl's, I like some of their other products. But shaving is literally where the rubber meets the road, and you can't get away with half-assing it when it comes to laying down an effective layer of lube to protect the skin while a scary-sharp blade peels a few layers away.

No, what I mean by "new school" shaving creams are creams which clearly come from the traditional English mold of a relatively simple, glycerin-based formula, but which take it a step further and improve on certain areas of performance where even the best of the old-school shaving creams could be better.

Like slickness, for one. Yesterday I treated myself to a shave with Trumper's Violet shaving cream, one of my favorite old-school English creams. I've been shaving with this stuff for quite awhile now, and I've never gotten a bad shave with it -- it shaves like it smells, which is great.

But after several weeks of shaving with new school creams from Nancy Boy and Truefitt, I found myself noticing things about the Trumper I hadn't before. Like the way it took a lot more cream and water, and time, for my brush to whip up the right kind of lather for a good shave (smooth, creamy, no bubbles, nothing running down my neck and onto my chest). With the new school creams, they're practically exploding with lather halfway out of the tub, and whether I use a little bit of water or a lot of it, whether I swirl the brush around and around to make lather in my other hand or just make the lather directly on my face, the Nancy Boy and Truefitt Ultimate Comfort creams always make perfect lather that shaves like nobody's business. They're much easier to get perfect lather with, every time.

Another thing I noticed was that shaving with the Trumper cream left a dry path of face behind the blade as it swept across my skin, which meant that shaving over that area without first getting it wet and lathered again meant I was basically dryshaving. With the new school creams, especially Nancy Boy's, my skin stays slick and lubricated no matter how many passes I make with the razor. I noticed this same phenomenon with Cremo Cream's excellent brushless shaving cream -- unlike the old school creams, the new breed keep your skin slick and protected even after you've shaved it. This really does wonders in terms of eliminating razor burn and other irritation.

But it's after a shave that I notice the biggest difference between the traditional shaving creams like the Trumper's, and new school creams like Nancy Boy and Truefitt's Ultimate Comfort. The best English creams are already much more skin-friendly than your typical drugstore foams and gels (and especially that over-cologned designer garbage at the mall), but the new school creams take it much further. Both Nancy Boy and the new Truefitt cream have more glycerin in their formulas, as well as skin-healing niceties like aloe and avocado oil, allantoin, cucumber extract (one of the main ingredients in D. R. Harris's amazing Aftershave Milk), Vitamin E, and none of the artificial colorants or perfumes that can irritate your skin. When I shave with these new school creams (or with the equally fantastic Italian shaving cream Proraso) , my face feels great, and without a hint of the tightness and dryness I get from most of the traditional English shaving creams (Taylor's Avocado being the sole exception -- in many ways, it's kind of halfway between the two camps).

Does this mean I'm through with English shaving creams? Not on your life -- I love my favorite Trumper and Taylor creams, and will keep shaving with them whenever I want a shot of their particular flava. Trumper's Violet, especially, I need to shave with at least once a week, just for the scent alone.

I always crack up when I see shavegeeks discover a new shaving product that works really well and suddenly they've got to get rid of everything they've been using. "Get this crap OUTTA here!" They spent hundreds of dollars buying up all kinds of upper-echelon product but now they've got to toss it to the curb, and all because of some chocolate/marshmallow/Teddy Graham scented shave stick they fell in love with. And then a week later when they've sobered up they place another order with Classic Shaving to buy all the stuff they just tossed. Unless you live in a sheath that's just a bit wider than your own body circumference, it's okay to keep stuff, I feel.

Some traditionalist shavegeeks grumble about these new school creams, feeling threatened, I suppose, by anything that isn't 200 years old and printed in Ye Olde Taverne Sign font. Hey, I'm down with the geeks if we're talking about the "young guy" shaving products at the mall. But the new school creams like Nancy Boy, Cremo Cream, and Truefitt & Hill's Ultimate Comfort are a whole other animal, and a genuine improvement over what came before. My skin's never been so happy since I started shaving with a safety razor.