The Shavette: a More Convenient Straight Razor or Just a Glorified Safety Razor?

I first encountered the shavette when I visited a local barbershop and was suprised to see the barber yielding a straight razor to shave the back of my neck. When I saw him then take out what was half of a derby safety razor blade, I was intrigued and had a look on the internet to find out more.

Shavettes are reasonably priced and a decent dovo of Solingen shavette will set you back around £25 or around $40 but you can find much cheaper models, such as the one offered by http://www.shaving-shack.com/

Whilst I really like the idea of being able to simply throw out your used blade at the end of the shave and insert a sharp new one for the next without the pain of stropping, I just couldn't understand what advantage the shavette has over a traditional safety razor as they both accept similar blades.

However, the shavette often offers a selection of attachment blade holders which can hold different varieties of blade.

Here are a couple of the different blade holders offered by dovo, and the selection ranges from holders for standard double edge or single edge safety blades to personna shavette blades which are much thicker and similar to a real straight razor blade, but still disposable.


So the shavette may well be a more convenient alternative to the straight razor, with the personna shavette blades offering a similarly close shave to the straight razor. I can't help thinking the traditional straight razor just has a certain coolness or appeal which I can't put my finger on, and I  think the shavette, however brilliant, just misses that edge.

For more info on the shavette, here's a pretty good video I found on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_wcL-nPGRg