20.07.2024 - Pungent Banana!

• Prep: cold water
• Razor: Leaf Thorn
• Blade: Derby Premium half DE
• Brush: TGS Galaxy 26 mm
• Lather: Southern Witchcrafts - Boonana
• Post Shave: Southern Witchcrafts - Boonana AS; Natura Siberica ASB gel; sunscreen
• Fragrance: Extro - Caffé EdT

---

Head shave and beard contouring. 1 pass plus cleanup on the dome.

So since our inaugural BVWSC-shave had to be postponed, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to use another banana scent before trying Don José.
Boonana is unfortunately one that I despise. The release was a real hypefest back then and everyone except me seemed to praise the soap… Well, time to find out if my mind has changed. Spoiler alert: no, it hasn’t.
Boonana is the scent equivalent to rotten banana peels. It smells kinda like when you used to be a school kid and forgot to take out a banana from your lunchbox in the summer holidays, then find it again after six weeks. It’s a pungent banana smell. I definitely don’t get the comparison to Samhain, SWs Magnum Opus IMHO. While Samhain is a delightfully wicked take on Pumpkin Spice Latte, this here is just decomposing banana. Ugh! The typical SW properties are thankfully still there, so you have a top notch vegan soap base and a great alcohol free aftershave… But I’d rather use bangers like Samhain, Necromantic, GraveFruit 2, Valley of Ashes or the sadly discontinued Pomona than this organic waste smell. Worst SW scent together with the rightfully discontinued Tres Matres IMHO. I’m just grateful that I’ll catch less flak for my opinion this time than back in the day on Reddit (it’s actually nice that everyone here is mature enough to know that one can respectfully disagree and a negative opinion is not a direct insult to the artisan).
Basically I tried to cover up the pungent banana with coffee smell by an Extro EdT and went grocery shopping smelling like a hipster coffee shop. No wonder I had most of the lanes to myself…

So yeah, after reading this essay of a SOTD you can guess that I am very excited for AYLM Don José and what a kind of write-up I’m capable of. I promise a honest first impression review!