I was prompted to bust out my sample of Truefitt and Hill’s Grafton shaving cream after stumbling across this post, wherein various folks on Shavenook declare Grafton to be identical to Taylor of Old Bond Street’s Mr. Taylor scent.

Naturally, I lathered up, took a sniff, and followed up with a sniff of my bottle of Mr. Taylor’s cologne. And while I’ll agree that they’re quite similar, I thought I picked up a bit more spice in the bouquet of the Mr. Taylor. For what it’s worth, T&H describe their Grafton as “Warm and spicy, Grafton has a fresh herbaceous opening combined with a spicy floral heart, leading onto a rich, woody, amber background with a hint of leather”, compared to TOBS on Mr Taylor: “A fresh fougere accord with herbaceous top notes of lavender, bergamot, green notes resting on a heart with geranium and soft green fern. The base of this fragrance is ambery with cedar, leathery, moss and musky.” So, yeah, definitely sounds like they were at least shooting for something similar, if not exactly the same.

Anyhow, the scent was quite nice, if the above sounds like something you’d like. Strength-wise, it was pretty darned good; about what I’d call the perfect strength right off the bat, however I did notice some not-insignificant level of fading during the shave.

As for the lather, it’s on par with most of the other T&H I’ve tried (I think the slightly lower quality shaves I had with the Lavender might be an abberation). You can coax a quite thick lather out of it with a decent level of lubrication; don’t overdo it on the water however or it will thin down a fair bit. And reasonable moisturization properties.

9/10 Scent Pleasantness

9/10 Scent Strength

8/10 Lather Quality

I assess this one to be a solid 8/10. I’d say everyone should at least

give the T&H sampler pack a try.

Gear used:

Ingredient List: Water, Stearic Acid, Mystric Acid, Potassium Hydroxide, Coconut Acid, Glycerin, Fragrance, Triethanolamine, Phenoxyethanol, Butylparaben, Ethylparaben, Isobutylparaben, Sodium Hydroxide, Methylparaben, Propylparaben.