The Beauty Blog — Salons + Skin Care
Caron: Pour Un Homme at Martial Vivot
Vanity Fair sent a writer to be shaved at the Midtown salon, and printed the whole thing — the assessment, the hot towel, the blade.
What Vanity Fair reported
In June 2011, Vanity Fair’s Beauty Blog published Anthony Rotunno’s first-person account of the Pour Un Homme straight-razor shave at Martial Vivot Salon Pour Hommes in Midtown Manhattan. It remains one of the few published pieces to follow a shave at the salon from beginning to end.
Rotunno wrote that Vivot, who opened his namesake salon in 2008, is beloved by that certain set of New York men who want to look like a million bucks — and most likely have the bank accounts to match. The Pour Un Homme service was the fifth shave on the salon’s menu and used products exclusively from the French beauty house Caron.
The reporting is unusually specific about method. Before touching the blade, Vivot spent several minutes examining two days of stubble, explaining that hair on the neck below the chin has no defined growth pattern, which is what forces a barber to work against the grain and leaves the redness most men live with. His prescriptions: shave after showering, because the steam relaxes the hair, and work the neck gently with a loofah first to bring stray hairs up where the blade can find them. Then a hot towel infused with lavender, vanilla, musk and amber; a lather of Pour Un Homme soap massaged into the stubble; and only then the razor.
Vivot, who opened his namesake salon in 2008, is beloved by that certain set of New York men who want to look like a million bucks (and most likely have the bank accounts to match).
It’s like a minefield.
The clipping
