Rice Wine Baths, Timothée Thée Stud, & the 24 Best Products of '24

Hullo from Seoul! We’re fighting jet lag from that 13-hour flight, with bellies full of fried chicken and Cass beer—fresh off a dry sauna and makgeolli rice wine bath at Rakkojae.

Let me take this moment to shout out some products I’m feeling grateful for after the long-haul flight and a day in freezing-cold Seoul:

• Dove Men+Care antiperspirant spray because yes, I take zero risks with swass threats on a full day of travel—the aluminum around my thighs and junky is a calculated risk I am willing to make.

• Narcyss Upper Hand hand lotion for that dense defense against dehydration (you smell great, too!)

• Sulwhasoo firming face cream which is also so frickin dense I knew I had to bring it back to its motherland in these drying times.

• SmartMouth zinc ion toothpaste because it is doing the most to mask the fried chicken breath

Our first full day is in the books, and we’re staring down handfuls of brand meetings, cosmetic clinic visits, and spa treatments for the next few weeks across Seoul, Busan, and Jeju. I’ll share the relevant highlights, of course. So far, it’s the aforementioned rice-milk bath, plus the traditional hanok-integrated flagship stores like Sulwhasoo, Coréelle, and Pyunkang Yul.

I can’t stop thinking about Thée Grooming Serve of the Year

Timothée Chalamet’s press tour for A Complete Unknown is charming the pants off everyone—kid’s getting an Oscar this season for that rizz alone, nevermind that the performance deserves it, too.

And about 3-4 times each day, I find myself thinking about his look du jour/du tour: That boy-band hair part and the sparse combed-down mustache, sometimes paired with some anchor stubble:

It brings to mind the Mean Girls line: “I saw Regina George wearing army pants and flip flops, so I wore army pants and flip flops…” Well, Timothée’s stache and anchor-scruff are my army pants and flip flops, and I will be working my way towards that hair in coming months. I have a blondie mustache myself, so I’ll need to dye it in order to pull this off.

Let Timothée be a lesson for us all: You can do a lot with a little (in his case, that’s facial hair) And you don’t even have to manicure your eyebrows—more power to him for the overgrowns and ne’er-pluckeds.

New on YouTube: The 10 Best Signature Scent Candidates

On this day in Blue Print by Adam Hurly history, the video for Best Signature Scents went public. (With my Timmy-esque hair that I lament cutting in September.)

Half the video is me gooning over these 10 scents—but I really do adore each ones, as evidenced in the clip; they sincerely deserve that “10 Best” distinction. Special shout out to Fulton & Roark for being the sponsor of that video too—I appreciate that you understand the long-game of YouTube sponsorships on highly searched terms (hey, 2,000 views and counting already!) … and that you are keeping some fuel in our tank in these early days.

I also respect that F&R withdrew their own scents from the curation due to the sponsorship; still, in their ad segment, I called out Ramble from the label’s A+ lineup, which is mossy and mind-clearing and forest-bath-y, hence why the spill-proof Ramble solid flew with me to Korea and Japan for these months.

I want to iterate how helpful it is for you to watch/like/comment on any videos we publish, if you are active on YouTube. The engagement goes a long way for a small and new channel, especially if you do genuinely watch it before liking/commenting. So if you ain’t subscribed yet: Please do! More goon-ish videos to come, promise.

The Best Grooming Products of 2024

Before traveling, I shot this roundup of the 24 Best Grooming Product Launches of 2024—and if you’re one of the delivery guys who bring me boxes every day, you know I tested tons of options:

These 24 launches earned their spot for many significant reasons. These include brand milestones (like my hair care fav Church California moving into skincare), big shifts for the grooming industry as a whole (face tanners like Enhanse’s are actually natural looking and functional), or even innovation within a product category (like Wahl’s ergo-thoughtful self-trimming clippers, Amouage barrel-aging its Essences fragrances, or Dior going water-based with Sauvage Eau Forte).

And some I just plain loved enough to cast in this roster: PrettyBoy’s gel cleanser, Heretic’s chillingly cool Nosferatu scent, Sachajuan’s universal and featherlight hair texturizing cream, or the indie-darling Brightside with its dense, fiber-like body-building hair styler.

You can peek at them all on the site too, and shop them easily there.

Alright Bye

We’ll start our biweekly newsletter giveaways next Sunday—the first one should have many of you smelling fab-u-lous and fresh in the new year.

Parting shot: Here is dear André indulging in the rice-wine soak earlier this evening. We pruned for an hour in that drink—after half an hour in the dry sauna—and now we’ll sleep for 10.

Take care, everyone. Happy final days of 2024. And as they say in Korea:

막걸리탕에 들어가기 전에 더러운 엉덩이를 씻어라!