Beard oil: Let's talk like this between us men // Update 01.05.2018
24.1.2018
Translation: machine translated
Men have beards. Some women do too. The latter tend to shave, while men have to take care of their facial hair. Probably the easiest way: beard oil.
Men, we need to talk.
When we hit puberty, we start to sprout hair on our faces. Elsewhere too, but we won't talk about that today. Maybe tomorrow. Probably not. Today we're talking about your beard. Why am I doing this? Because our entire beauty editorial team is made up of women called Natalie Hemengül, so she asked me to write about beard oil. As a man.
Okay, I can do that.
What's sprouting on your face
While the beard is damn chic and manly, it is more or less a waste product in evolutionary terms. Because, let's be honest: even if we look like lumberjacks who get into fistfights with bears for breakfast, a beard is not directly useful. Leftover food gets caught in it and sometimes the skin underneath is terribly itchy. Depending on who your boyfriend or girlfriend is, he or she may also be against beards.
The superfluousness of a beard is even confirmed by science. Just like our body hair, it is a remnant from times when people had to be even hairier because of the environment. Other remnants can be found on our legs, arms and genitals, and men have hairy chests. Sometimes even backs.
Nevertheless: I like my beard and I want it to stay.
What I can do for my beard
I don't actually have to do anything to keep my beard growing and looking reasonably good. However, my skin sometimes gets itchy under my beard and when I trim my facial hair, it becomes painful at some point when the beard hair gets knotted.
The solution to this problem was offered to me at the Tattoo Fair in Bern a few years ago: Beard oil. If we're being precise, it was the oil from the Swiss brand Mootes that caught my eye. Because it bears the name "North Laine". The name of a street in my favourite British town of Brighton, where small shops have been holding their own for decades and resisting the onward march of globalisation by simply being nice and good.
Source: stepin.de
The oil promises a lot: not only should your beard no longer be so bristly, but the skin underneath should also be nourished and smell good. Because nobody likes smelly men.
In short: beard oil is not just for weird hipsters who are somehow looking for an even less cool version of a perfume. Beard oil cares for your skin, keeps your beard clean and your beard hairs less tangled.
How to use beard oil
Applying beard oil is easy. Because honestly, if it was complicated, I would have sworn off the concept of beard oil long ago. Instead, the little bottles have become a standard fixture in my bathroom.
- Drip a few drops of beard oil into the palm of your hand
- The more beard, the more oil
- Rub your hands together
- Run oiled hands through the beard
- Massage in the oil
- Done
The whole thing hardly takes longer than 30 seconds every morning.
The thing with fragrances and the big exception
When you think of "fragrance", you probably think of the overpowering smell of an imported perfume store or the only slightly more pleasant scent of a Lush shop. Overwhelming, sweet and, per parenting dogma, very feminine.
Beard oils, on the other hand, are only made for men, as in most cases women do not have beard hair. This means that the fragrance world also differs massively from that of the perfume industry. In other words, the fragrances are often harsher and drier. Unless they contain patchouli, which always adds a little softness.
The exception here is Mootes.
Mootes breaks with the masculine-outside-patchouli tradition. North Laine comes with a genuinely sweet incense note that makes the fragrance appear sweeter and lighter without sacrificing masculinity. Immediately after application, the fragrance hits you hard in the nose, but as soon as the oil has been in the air for a few minutes, it fizzles out to a large extent, leaving behind a subtle scent that accompanies you throughout the day.
On the flipside, there is Big Red. The Canadian manufacturer that boasts that it produces all its products in small quantities in British Columbia. By hipsters with beards. At least. The problem with Big Red is that they take the masculinity approach too far. It seems to me like they've stripped out any interesting fragrance notes because that might somehow be feminine. The result is a flat, nuance-less scent that smells like cornflakes freshly poured into a bowl with no milk.
This is probably intentional. Because the manufacturer admits on its website that it has deliberately made an understatement in terms of fragrance.
It is lightly scented so as not to offend the senses but to offer a pleasing, subtle scent throughout the beard.
With a few exceptions, I don't understand this in the context of beard oils. Because no beard oil wants to compete with the scent of an imported perfumery.
Secret tips about secret tips
That's all well and good, but the world of beard oils is a big one. However, the marketing budget of most beard care product manufacturers - what a word - is minuscule. What's more, no bearded man likes big adverts, especially as the target group is clearly the hipster crowd. As a result, the great brands often only get around via insider tips through bars where no two chairs are the same and there are a lot of lumberjacks sitting around who have never seen an axe before.
In addition to Mootes, which are no longer an insider tip in Switzerland, I recommend two brands in particular. One comes from Scotland and is called Braw Beard Oils. Braw Beard Oils was born out of an accident. Scottish mountain biker John Jackson broke two vertebrae in his back during training. However, as the fractures were stable, he decided to take part in a race "out of sheer stupidity". Five months of rehabilitation followed, during which Jackson learnt to work with oils and mix his own fragrant tinctures. That was in 2011. Seven years later, John Jackson has nine oils on sale, all based on hemp oil and enriched with fragrances to care for your beard.
My absolute favourite and insider tip: Vikingr. Vikingr is an Icelandic brand that may no longer exist. The website is broken and nobody responds to my emails. I bought the one bottle I have and save the rest for very special occasions such as family celebrations, job interviews or dates in Reykjavik. If I had known how rare the bottles are, I would have bought more.
Vikingr consists of two men: Þór and Óðinn - both swear that this is coincidence and the truth. They have been friends since childhood, are enthusiasts for the history of Vikings and have discovered beard care in their professional lives. Or had discovered it, depending on whether the company still exists. Their motto is clear: if the Vikings didn't have it, then Vikingr doesn't want the ingredient either.
A request on my own behalf: If you know where I can get Vikingr, please let me know. Maybe you know someone in Iceland? Or are you going there yourself? I'll pay for it too.
So, that's it. Keep it smooth, guys.
And if you want to know how I managed to get the photos in this article, I've described the shoot over on digitec.
Update 29.01.2018: Vikingr bankrupt
News from Iceland via our French translator Anne Chapuis: Vikingr has gone bankrupt according to unconfirmed information. I will set about tracking down the remaining stock and storing it at home.
Update 01.05.2018: Vikingr back online?
User zeljko1979 reports that ByVikingr, the official Vikingr website, is back online.
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