Reddit reviews No. 63 Men's 150 Shave Soap with Tin, Aromatic, Warm, Spicy Masculine Fragrance, Quad-Milled For Long Lasting Soap & Enriched With Shea Butter

Here's what I would suggest:

Razor: either this one if you want to stay frugal or this one if you want to splurge a bit. I'd stay away from the QShave. It's a clone of a razor with a lot of design issues. One being that the head is so large it's hard to get under the nose, etc.; another issue is that it is extremely aggressive even at its lowest setting.

Brush: This synthetic brush. I think it's much better to start with a synthetic than a boar brush. Boar brushes are less comfortable on your face and actually make it more difficult to make lather until they break in. No reason to mess with those variables when you're just trying to get the hang of it. As for this specific synthetic brush, I have one and it is an amazing value for the money. It is one of about a dozen brushes I own, some of which were $200+, and this $12 brush holds its own with them.

Shaving soap: Lots of options here. Barrister & Mann's Latha line performs extremely well and is a great value. Several scents to choose from. Barrister &
Mann's Glissant line is a bit more expensive but has even better performance and more complex scents. Seville is a particularly good starting point with B&M, just an extremely clean, classic, masculine scent. Pre de Provence and Pre de Provence No. 63 are classic french soaps that smell great and perform very well.

Aftershave: Even more options here. You could go with Thayer's witch hazel with aloe, or if you want a traditional high alcohol aftershave, Fine Accoutrements is excellent. There are several scents, all based on popular and/or classic colognes. Or you could splurge and get the world's greatest aftershave product, L'Occitane Cade After Shave Balm.

Blades: Amazon has some good deals on blades in bulk but just sucks for sampler packs, and you want to start with a sampler pack because reasons. So head on over to TryABlade and order two of the "Top 10 Sampler." You can't use your Amazon credit there, but it's going to come to less than $10 including shipping.

So, if you go with the cheapest option in each category, you come out to fifty dollars or so if I'm adding right, which leaves you room to pick out one or more of those splurge options I mentioned.

If I were buying for myself, I'd get:

$23.59 - Edwin Jagger DE89L

$62.00 - Semogue Owners Club 2-band badger

$13.49 - Pre de Provence No. 63

$99.07 - Total

If you want something that is just good enough to get the job done and don't care for scent, go for a shave stick or cream in a tube such as La Toja, Arko, Derby, Wilkinson Sword, Speick, Palmolive etc.

But honestly, your best bet would be Pre de Provence. It's very cheap and because it's a quadruple-milled soap, it will last many years plus the quality and scent of it is amazing.

Razor: Edwin Jagger DE89

Brush: Fendrihan Synthetic

Shaving Cream: Speick (currently overpriced)

Or if you want to go for a Shaving Soap:

Shaving Soap: PdP 63

or

B&M Latha Oceana

AfterShave: Nivea Sensitive Cooling (or get one from local drugstore, walmart etc (non cooling version))

Blades: Get this from tryablade.com

But if I were you:

I would get: the DE89 razor from Amazon, a 22mm synthetic brush from Maggard Razors, B&M Seville Shave soap/Speick Shave Cream from Maggard Razors, Blade Sampler from tryablade, and nivea aftershave balm sensitive from Local stores

Not sure what your budget is, but here are a few soap of the lower-cost, Amazon available soaps that I would recommend.

Pré de Provence

Pré de Provence is an excellent triple- or by some accounts quad-milled soap French soap, and strikes one of the best cost/performance/longevity ratios I've ever seen on a soap. It creates an excellent, slick, protective lather and provides an awesome post-shave feel even after you rinse it off. It comes in two scents:

Pré de Provence is a light, herbal scent that seems to have a strong sage note in it. I haven't used it, but I have used its brother. $11.99USD for 150g on Amazon.

Pré de Provence No. 63 is a warm, spicy cologne sort of scent that has notes of pepper, cedarwood, leather and tobacco leaves among others. $14.04USD for 150g on Amazon.

Cella Crema da Barba

Cella is a soft Italian soap that has a mild scent of cherry and almond. I don't know if it would be considered "manly," but this stuff has been around for nearly 120 years, and men have been shaving with it for all that time, so it has to be doing something right. It's also a great performer with good post-shave feel. $12.00 for 150g on Amazon.

La Toja

La Toja is a Spanish soap in stick form, containing mineral salts. Its scent reminds me a bit of briny sea air and talcum powder. La Toja's claim is that the addition of the mineral salts helps as a skin conditioner. $6.00USD for 50g on Amazon.

Speick

Speick is a German soap whose scent comes from the speick plant and lavender essential oil. It's one of my favorite soaps of all time in terms of both performance and scent. $8.08USD on Amazon.

Chiseled Face Groomatorium

Chiseled Face is one of our US artisans, and his products are among the best performing that I've ever used. He has a handful of different scents that you may find interesting, but my favorite of them is Ghost Town Barber.

Chiseled Face Ghost Town Barber has notes of bergamot, basil leaf, white patchouli, oakmoss, texas cedar, leather, smoke, and gunpowder (I copy/pasted that from his description). $14.99USD for 113g on Amazon.

 

These are all US links, so I hope they work for you. I'm sorry to say that I can't help with the dry skin thing; my skin is fairly oily and not overly sensitive.

For soaps/creams on Amazon:

• Wet Shaving Products soaps
  
• Pre de Provence soap & PdP "63" soap (love these!)
  
• Wholly Kaw soaps
  
• Art of Shaving cream
  
• Chiseled Face soaps
  
• Castle Forbes shaving creams (expensive but nice)
  
• Proraso Green shaving cream (nothing exciting, but works well)
  
  Brushes:
  
  
• Fine Accountrements 20 or 24mm synthetic brush
  
• Satin Tip white synthetic brush
  
  
  Honestly, Amazon is kinda lacking when it comes to quality brushes. There are a ton of really questionable or low quality brushes on Amazon and it can be hard to find a good one unless you have a specific model or brand in mind.
  
  For the money the RazoRock Plissoft brushes are the best "bang for the buck." The $10 or $13 version would both be good. After that, the Stirling Soaps "factory seconds" 26mm brushes are also a great value and use the same style knot.

PdP No 63 contains no coconut oil.

https://www.amazon.com/Aromatic-Masculine-Fragrance-Quad-Milled-Enriched/dp/B00T72RDWA?th=1

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Nor does DR Harris Windsor

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nor Nivea soap stick

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https://www.amazon.com/Nivea-Men-Maximum-Hydration-Body/dp/B078K4613H/ref=pd_sbs_194_1/132-8317469-9354134?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07B43HG6Y&pd_rd_r=e4d15a8f-76ee-11e9-b98b-a55320510026&pd_rd_w=Dh2A1&pd_rd_wg=EdTrh&pf_rd_p=588939de-d3f8-42f1-a3d8-d556eae5797d&pf_rd_r=EPDVW9W0G8TEZNAKK1PV&refRID=EPDVW9W0G8TEZNAKK1PV&th=1

Water, Glycerin, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Stearate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sorbitol, Sodium Xylene Sulfonate, Stearic Acid, Panthenol, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice Powder, Fragrance, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Titanium Dioxide.

Sorry, the soap.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00T72RDWA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_a_it?qid=1456958308&sr=8-1&keywords=pre+de+provence+63+shave

Not really artisanal soap, but this and this are excellent values. Those are 5.25 ounce pucks of hard milled soap that will last incredibly long even with daily use. I can’t compare these to Proraso since I have never tried it. These soaps though will no doubt last way longer than a tub of Proasomthough. I have both of these pucks and enjoy them both very much. They represent what I consider to be one of the best values available. Every once in a while you can catch the original scent for under $10 on Amazon.