the toilette of my beloved

My husband is a lot more meticulous than I am. Where I am slovenly and haphazard, he is careful and graceful. I especially admire the way he makes his daily routines into aesthetic rituals that have a real depth and beauty to them. For example, while I shower in a dark closet of a bathroom, he bathes in a foggy, luminous steam in the other bathroom, which has a window in the shower area. He uses Guerlain’s Vetiver body wash to wash his body—this makes that steam smell absolutely luscious—and a local company’s equally marvelous Mahogany soap for his face. He washes his hair with lavender shampoo, and sometimes conditions with rosemary mint. He says that on of his favorite things about the process is “smelling all the different stuff as I put it on.”

Once he feels sufficiently steamed up, he wraps his lithe little body in a white towel, and sets to work on his dark, bristly beard. He lathers up some Crabtree & Evelyn Sandalwood Aromatic Shave Cream and paints it on his face with a boarbrush. then shaves with a straight razor. Like I say, he’s a super classy dude. Then he rinses with hot water and then cold, to close up his pores. He then splashes on the now-discontinued Cade After Shave Splash, which he says hurts horribly but prevents breakout, and then follows it with Guerlain’s Baume Apres-Rasage and some moisturizer. Finally, he chooses ‘a cologne or two”—he says I seem to dig Guerlain Vetiver on his neck and Yardley English Lavender on his chest.

He comes out of his room smelling herbaceous, woody, and incredible. He has taste, and he knows how to take care of his body. A good man all around, I say : )