Please be gentle with me as this is my first ever review in Beauty & Wellness and is part of my Challenge Yourself W/O.

Why Black Suede?

My wife purchased this from Avon when it was on special offer for me to try – I’d never even heard of the brand before. It was pretty cheap and I was very pleasantly surprised when I used it for the first time – it smells great! (Apparently the fragrance is described as “Woodland Fresh”.) The fragrance is masculine without being “musky”. My wife loves it as well, which is obviously an important factor! :-)

How does it react to my skin?

For me this is probably the most important factor when it comes to aftershaves as I have quite sensitive (dry) skin and am very prone to Barber’s Rash. Black Suede does sting a little on first contact with the skin after shaving but that’s to be expected – after all it is an alcohol-based aftershave. However this stinging sensation lasts only a second or two (some other aftershaves leave an unpleasant stinging sensation for quite a while), and my skin really does feel fresh and revitalised straight afterwards. (Hey maybe one of these companies could pay me money to write their blurbs?!?? What do you think?) The scent is great, as already mentioned. I’ve never had problems with Barber’s Rash (or any other skin problems) after using it. As far as I can tell it should be fine for all skin types – but I’m not exactly an expert on that sort of thing… Just one short caution though – the smell is quite strong, so while nice you need to be careful not to use too much.

How does it compare to other aftershaves I’ve used?

As far as the smell goes, the only aftershave I really prefer is Kouros - though not by much. Since that is much more expensive I don’t consider it to be as good as Black Suede overall. Nivea for Men doesn’t sting on application but doesn’t smell as nice and tends to leave a slight, slimy residue so that loses points. I don’t like the smell of Brut, which also feels like it’s corroding my skin so I only ever got it once. So overall, Black Suede is now my preferred aftershave with its combination of smelling great, being kind to my skin (is that expression copyrighted by someone?!?), and being very inexpensive. The bottle size is 100ml, and as you don’t need to use much at a time, this will last you absolutely aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages.

Ingredients

Alcohol Denat, Aqua, Glycerin, Parfum, Benzophrenate-2, BHT, Pentasodium Pentetate, Propylene Glycol, CI 15510, CI 47005.

Caution

As this product is flammable, please do not throw it into the fire. It may also be a bad idea to drink it. Do not pour it into your eye or insert in any body cavity whatsoever. You read it here first.

Write Off

Well, the purpose of this write off was to challenge myself to write in a category I’ve never written in before (and in this case, with a couple of notable writers excepted, very rarely read in - Teri & Savanna, I expect you to point out anything if I went wrong with this review!), and it’s certainly accomplished its goal . I had to actually stop and think about what I needed to include in this review, whereas with book / film / game reviews I mostly just write straight off, and know automatically what sort of details I need to include. If you do participate in the WO I’d be interested to know if you had the same experience.

Full details of the Write Off are HERE.


Recommended: Yes